


3 ()( w 



*n 




:: 







1 









'LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



jMe/£ lB.il.. 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA.! 



WORKS OF WILLIAM MATHEWS. 

IN THE ORDER OF THEIR PUBLICATION. 



GETTING ON IN THE WORLD ; 

OK HINTS ON SUCCESS IN LIFE. 
1 volume, 12mo, pages 874, price $2.00. 

THE GREAT CONVERSERS. 

AND OTHER ESSAYS. 
1 volume, 12mo, pages 304, price $1.75. 

WORDS, THEIR USE AND ABUSE. 

1 volume, *12mo. pages 384, price $2.00. 

HOURS WITH MEN AND BOOKS. 

1 volume, 12mo, pages 384, price $2.00. 



IN PREPARATION. 



"MONDAY-CHATS;" 

A Selection from the ;t Causeries du Luudi " of C. -A. Sainte- 
Beuve, with a Biographical and Critical Introduc- 
tion by the translator. 

ORATORY AND ORATORS. 



HOURS 



MEN ANT) BOOKS. 



WILLIAM MATHEWS, LL.D. 




CHICAGO: 
S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY, 

1877. 






<z >' 



<* 



A* 



Copyright, 1877, 
By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 



KNIGHT R LEONARD . I 



HON. HENRY W. PAINE, LL.D., 



OF BOSTON, MASS., 



IN MEMORY OF A LIFE-LONG FRIENDSHIP, BEGUN IN MY SCHOOL-BOY 
DAYS, WHEN, AS MY TEACHER, 



Meas esse aliquid putare r 



THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED 



WITH THE AFFECTIONATE REGARDS OF 



THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



I. Thomas De Quince y. - - - 9 

II. Robert South, - - - 58 

III. Charles H. Spurgeon. - - - 81 

IV. Recollections of Judge Story, - 97 
V. Moral Grahamism, - - - 117 

VI. Strength and Health, - - - 129 

VII. Professorships of Books and Reading. - 136 

VIII. The Morality of Good Living. - 159 

IX. The Illusions of History, - - - 171 

X. Homilies on Early Rising, - - 229 

XI. Literary Triflers, - - - -237 

XII. Writing for the Press, - - 256 

XIII. The Study of the Modern Languages, - 263 

XIV. Working by Rule, - - - 272 
XV. Too Much Speaking, - - - 279 

XVI. A Forgotten Wit, - - - 287 

XVII. Are We Anglo-Saxon? - - - 299 

XVIII. A Day at Oxford. - - - 307 

XIX. An Hour at Christ's Hospital, - - 327 

XX. Book-Buying, - - 336 

XXI. A Pinch of Snuff, - - - - 347 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 



A BOUT twenty years ago there might have been seen 
-*--*- flitting about the rural lanes in the neighborhood 
of Edinburgh, Scotland, a strange, diminutive, spectral- 
looking being, clad in a motley costume, with his hat 
hung over the back of his head, his neck- cloth twisted 
like a wisp of straw, and altogether so grotesque-looking, 
that you could not help stopping to look at him, and 
wondering to what race, order, or age of human beings 
he belonged. As you stopped to look at him, you found 
him also stopping in suspicious alarm, and looking back 
at you; and then suddenly, like some ticket-of-leave man, 
hastily moving on, and, as if fearful of being caught, 
darting round the first turning, and disappearing from 
view. What was your surprise when it was whispered in 
your ear that in this fragile and unsubstantial figure, — 
this dagger of lath, — this ghostly body resting on a pair 
of immaterial legs, which you could have " trussed with 
all its apparel into an eelskin" — resided one of the most 
potent and original spirits that ever dwelt in a tenement 
of clay! And how was your surprise deepened, when 
you were further told that this singular being, — this 
migratory and almost disembodied intellect, — this little 
wandering anatomy, topped with a brain, whom you had 
found so shy, as if he had " feared each bush an officer," 
— was one of the subtlest thinkers, and the greatest 



10 THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 

masters of English prose, in this century; in a word, the 
far-famed "Opium-Eater," Thomas De Quincey ! It is the 
character and writings of this extraordinary man, and 
most unique and original genius, that we purpose to con- 
sider in this essay. 

Among all the charmed names of modern English lit- 
erature, is there probably any other English author whose 
works are read and re-read with such feelings of delight, 
wonder, and admiration as those of De Quincey ? Glanc- 
ing over the books that are books on his shelves, each 
the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, " the purest 
efficacy and extraction of that living spirit that bred 
them," does the scholar's eye rest on any with which it 
would cost him a keener pang to part, than with the 
writings of this great magister-sententiarum, — this Aqui- 
nas-Richter, — this arch-dreamer of dreams, "the Opium- 
Eater?" Read wherever the English language is spoken, 
he is by universal acknowledgment the most powerful 
and versatile master- of that tongue in our time, — the 
acutest, and at the same time the most gorgeous and elo- 
quent writer of English prose in the nineteenth century. 
Where, in the entire range of our later literature, will 
you find an intellect at once so solid and so subtle, so 
enormous learning conjoined with such power of original 
thinking, so daring, eccentric wit and grotesque fun with 
such sharpness and severity of style? Whatever the sub- 
ject he discusses, whether the character of the Caesars or 
the Aristocracy of England, — Homer and the Homeridaa, or 
Nichols's System of the Heavens, — Lessing's Laocoon, or 
the English Corn-Laws, — War, or Murder considered as one 
of the Fine Arts, — Casuistry, or Dinner, Real and Reputed, 
— Miracles, or Secret Societies, — Logic, Political Economy, 



THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 11 

or the Sphinx's Riddle,— he treats all in the same fasci- 
nating, yet subtle and searching manner, investing them 
with the charms of learning and scholarship, wit and 
humor, and combining, as have rarely before been com- 
bined, the rarely harmonizing elements of severe logic 
and exuberant fancy. 

Who, that has once read it, will ever forget that 
wondrous paper on "The English Mail Coach?" — that 
coach on which he rode, and on which it was " worth 
five years of life to ride, 1 ' after the battle of Talavera, — 
rode as if borne on the wings of a mighty victory flying 
by night through the sleeping land, " that should start to 
its feet at the words they came to speak?" What mar- 
vellous word-painting in the sketch entitled " The Spanish 
Nun," and in the essay on " Modern Superstitions," — 
particularly in the descriptions of the phantoms which 
haunt the traveler in trackless deserts, and of the strange 
voices which are heard by those who sail upon unknown 
seas! What lover of the horrible will ever forget the 
weird, snake-like fascination of that masterpiece of pow- 
erful writing in which De Quincey's slow, sustained, long- 
continued method of following a subject reaches a climax 
in his art of dealing with the feeling of terror, — we mean 
the "Three Memorable Murders?" Anything more fear- 
fully thrilling than the description of Williams, the mur- 
derer, with his ghastly face, in whose veins ran, not 
life-blood, that could kindle into a blush of shame, but 
a sort Of green sap, — with his eyes that seemed frozen 
and glazed, as if their light were all converged upon 
some victim lurking in the background, and the oiliness 
and snaky insinuation of his d&meanor, that counteracted 
the repulsiveness of his physiognomy, — who, if yon had 



12 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

run against him in the street, would have offered the 
most gentlemanly apologies, hoping that the mallet under 
his coat, his hidden instrument of murder, had not hurt 
you ! — anything more horrible than this never froze the 
blood, or held the spirit petrified in terror's hell of cold. 
Compared with the spell worked by this mighty magician, 
the necromancy of Monk Lewis is tame; the stories with 
which Ann Radcliffe, Miss Crowe, - Schiller, and even the 
Baron Reichenbach himself, make the blood run cold, the 
nerves prick, and the hair stand on end, are dull and 
insipid; and the enchantments of all the other high-priests 
of the supernatural, cheap and vulgar. 

Again, with what a magnetism does De Quincey hold us 
in the " Retreat of a Tartar Tribe," a paper recording 
a section of romantic story " not equalled," he says, 
"since the retreat of* the fallen angels!" What a 
fluctus decumanus of rhetoric is his "Vision of a Sudden 
Death," — a tale as mystically fearful as "The Ancient 
Mariner." With what a climax of painful incident, begin- 
ning with an absolute minimum of interest, does he chain 
our attention in " The Household Wreck! " How he thrills 
us with the fiery eloquence of the Confessions, and entrances 
us with the solemn, sustained, and lyrical raptures of the 
" Suspiria," and the "Dream Fugue" following his "Vision 
of a Sudden Death!" What a power he exhibits of seizing 
the impalpable and air- drawn scenery of dreams, and 
embodying it in impassioned language, — a faculty which 
nowhere else, in the whole compass of literature, has been 
so vividly displayed, as in that piece, so daring in its 
imaginative sweep, the final climax of his "Joan of Arc!" 
Dip wherever we will into this author's writings, we find 
on every page examples of the same narrative power, the 



THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 13 

same depth and keenness of philosophic criticism, the same 
psychological subtlety detecting the most veiled aspects of 
things, the same " quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles " 
of fancy, relieving the severity of the profoundest thoughts, 
the same dazzling fence of rhetoric, the same imperial 
dominion over the resources of expression, and the same 
sustained, witching melody of style. In his curious brain 
the most opposite elements are united; "fire and frost 
embrace each other." 

At once colossal and keen, De Quincey's intellect seems 
capable of taking the profoundest views of men and things, 
and of darting the most piercing glances into details; it has 
an eagle's eye to gaze at the sun, and the eye of a cat to 
glance at things in the dark ; is quick as a hawk to pounce 
upon a brilliant falsehood, yet as slow as a ferret to pursue 
a sophism through all its mazes and sinuosities. Now 
meditative in gentle thought, and anon sharp in analytic 
criticism ; now explaining the subtle charm of Wordsworth's 
poetry, and again unravelling a knotty point in Aristotle, 
or cornering a lie in Josephus ; to-day penetrating the bowels 
of the earth with the geologist, to-morrow soaring through 
the stellar spaces with the astronomer; it seems exactly 
fitted for every subject it discusses, and reminds you of the 
elephant's lithe proboscis, which with equal dexterity can 
uproot an oak or pick up a pin. Of this universality of his 
genius one who knew him well says, that in theology his 
knowledge was equal to that of two bishops ; in metaphysics 
he could puzzle any German professor; in astronomy he 
outshone Professor Nichol; in chemistry he could outdive 
Samuel Brown; and in Greek, excite to jealousy the shades 
of Porson and Samuel Parr. In short, to borrow an illus- 
tration of Macaulay, it is hardly an exaggeration to say of 



14 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

the Opium-Eater's intellect, that it resembled the tent 
which the fairy Paribanou gave to Prince Ahmed, — " Fold 
it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady; spread it, 
and the armies of powerful sultans might repose beneath 
its shade." 

With all this capaciousness and subtlety, however, 
De Quincey's is, at the same time, of all intellects the most 
vagrant and capricious, — scorning above all things the 
beaten track, doing nothing by square, rule, and compass, 
and never pursuing any path of inquiry, without digres- 
sion, for ten minutes together. Whatever the subject he 
announces to be under discussion, the title of one of his 
papers affords you no key to its contents. Like Montaigne, 
who in his chapter on Coaches treats only of Alexander and 
Julius Caesar, or like the writer on Iceland, who begins his 
chapter, " Of the Snakes of Iceland," by saying " There 
are no snakes in Iceland," — De Quincey contents himself 
often with the barest allusion to his theme, and strays into 
a thousand tempting bye-paths, leading off whole leagues 
therefrom, — "winding like a river at its own sweet will," — 
shedding " a light as from a painted window" on the most 
trivial objects, — but profoundly indifferent whether, at the 
end of his disquisition, he will have made any progress 
toward the goal for which he started. Like a fisherman, he 
throws out his capacious net into the ocean of learning, and 
sweeps in everything, however miscellaneous or motley its 
character. Hence, in reading his logical papers, you 
declare him the prince of desperate jokers; reading his 
jeux aVesprtt, you are ready with Archdeacon Hare to pro- 
nounce him the great logician of our times. " Oh, Mr. 
North! Mr. North! " shouts the Ettrick Shepherd in one of 
the " Noctes," when De Quincey is about to refute one of his 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 15 

post-prandial propositions, " I'm about to fa' into Mr. 
De Quinshy's hauns, sae come to my assistance, for I canna 
thole, being pressed up backward, step by step, intell a 
corner, till an argument that's ca'd a clincher clashes in 
your face, and knocks your head in sic force against the 
wa', that your crown gets a clour, leaving a dent in the 
wainscot. 1 ' 

Fully to estimate an author, we must know the man; 
and therefore, before entering upon a more critical notice 
of the Opium-Eater's genius, let us glance at some of the 
more notable facts of his life and character. Thomas 
De Quincey was born at Greenhayes, near Manchester, in 
1785. His father, a foreign merchant, who began life 
with what has been termed " the dangerous fortune of 
£6,000," prospered so well in. business that, when he died 
of consumption in his thirty-ninth year, he left to his 
widow and six young children a fortune of £30,000 and 
a pleasant seat in the place just named. This " imperfectly 
despicable man," as De Quincey calls him in allusion to his 
commercial position, rarely saw his children; and it was, 
therefore, the more fortunate that they had so good a 
mother, a well-educated, pious woman, who spared no pains 
to promote their welfare and happiness. Thomas, the son, 
came into the world, as he tells us, upon that tier of the 
social scaffolding which is the happiest for all good influ- 
ences. Agur's prayer was realized for him; he was neither 
too high, nor too low, — too rich, nor too poor. High 
enough he was to see models of good manners, of self- 
respect, and of simple dignity ; obscure enough to be left in 
the sweetest of solitudes. 

He was a singularly small and delicate child, — with a 
large brain, and a most acute nervous system, ill clad 



16 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

with flesh, — which made him the victim of those ills and 
miseries of boyhood from which the poet Oowper, in his 
early years, so keenly suffered. In his infancy he was 
afflicted for more than two years with a^ue; an affliction 
which was compensated by the double share, of affection 
lavished upon him by his mother and sisters, by whom 
he was made the pet of the family, and regarded as one 
of the sanctities of home. When, in after years, like 
Marcus Aurelius, he thanked Providence for the separate 
blessings of his childhood, he was wont to single out as 
worthy of special commemoration, that " he lived in a 
rustic solitude; that this solitude was in England; that 
his infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, 
and not by horrid pugilistic brothers; and, finally, that 
he and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, 
holy and magnificent church." 

A life so encompassed and hallowed seems specially 
adapted to develop his remarkable mental idiosyncrasies, 
and to intensify his exquisite sensibilities ; but he ■ was 
speedily to learn that there is no earthly seclusion 
inviolable to the inroad of sorrow; and suddenly, the 
whole complexion of the world was changed for him by 
an affliction that remained apparently an abiding grief 
through life, the death of his "gentlest of sisters," 
Elizabeth, the superb development of whose head was 
the astonishment of science. The marvelous passage in 
which he tells us how he bewailed the loss of this sister, 
and describes his feelings when he stole silently and 
secretly up to the chamber where the body lay, and, 
softly entering the room, closed the door, and found 
himself alone with the dead, — when, catching a glimpse 
from the open window of the scenery outside, he con- 



THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 17 

trasted the glory and the pomp of nature, redolent of 
life and beauty, with the little body, from which all life 
had fled, lying so still upon its bed, — " the frozen eyelids, 
the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them, 
the marble lips, the stiffening hands laid palm to palm, 
as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish,' 1 — 
is one of the most beautiful pieces of prose in our 
language. 

•'Could these be mistaken for life? Had it been so, wherefore did I not 
spring to those lips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it was not. 
I stood checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and whilst I 
stood, a solemn wind began to blow — the saddest that ear ever heard. It 
was a wind that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand 
centuries. Many times since upon summer days, when the sun is about the 
hottest, I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same 
hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell: it is in this world the one 
great audible symbol of eternity. And three times in my life have I hap- 
pened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances,— namely, when 
standing between an open window and a dead body on a summer day." 

In the same connection, he says: 

" God speaks to children also in dreams, and by the oracles that lurk 
in darkness. But in solitude, above all things, when made vocal to the 
meditative heart by the truths and services of a national church, God holds 
with children ' communion undisturbed.' Solitude, though it may be silent 
as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to 
man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone. Even a little 
child has a dread, whispering consciousness, that, if he should be summoned 
to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him 
by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share 
his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and 
child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, 
which in this world appals or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a 
far deeper s.olitude, through which already he has passed, and of another 
solitude, deeper still, through which he has to pass: reflex of one solitude — 
prefiguration of another." 

DeQuincey's grief, too deep for tears, would perhaps 
have hurried him into an untimely grave, had he not been 
awakened, somewhat rudely, from his reveries, by the 
1* 



18 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

arrival home of his elder brother. This brother was an 
extraordinary boy, as eccentric in his way as Thomas him- 
self, over whom he tyrannized by the mere force of character. 
He had a genius for mischief amounting almost to inspira- 
tion; "it was a divine afflatus which drove him in that 
direction; and such was his capacity for riding in whirl- 
winds and directing storms, that he made it his trade to 
create them, in order that he might direct them." A strong- 
contrast was this active, mischief-loving, bold, and clever 
boy to the puny Thomas, whom, naturally enough, he 
thoroughly despised. His martial nature prompted him to 
deeds too daring for the meek and gentle nature of the 
younger, from whom, nevertheless, he exacted the most 
unquestioning obedience. This obedience was based on the 
assumption that he himself was commander-in-chief; there- 
fore Thomas owed him military allegiance, — while, as cadet 
of his house, he owed him suit and service as its head. 

Having declared war against the "hands" of a Man- 
chester cotton mill, — one of whose number had insulted 
them by calling them "bucks," as they passed along Oxford 
Road home from school, the elder brother made the younger 
major-general; sometimes directing 'his movements upon 
the flank, and sometimes upon the rear of the enemy, — now 
planting him in ambush, and now as a corps of observation, 
as the exigencies of the case required. For two entire 
years, and twice every day in the week, did fearful battle 
rage between the belligerents with showers of stones and 
sticks, during which Thomas was thrice a prisoner in the 
enemy's hands. Arrived at home, the commander issued a 
bulletin of the engagement, which was read with much 
ceremony to the housekeeper. Sometimes this document 
announced a victory, sometimes a defeat: but the conduct 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 19 

of the major-general was sure to be sharply criticised, 
whatever the result. Now he was decorated with the Bath, 
and now he was deprived of his commission. At one time 
his services merited the highest promotion, — at another, he 
behaved with a cowardice that was inexplicable, except on 
the supposition of treachery. Once he was drummed out 
of the army, but " restored at the intercession of a distin- 
guished lady," — to wit, the housekeeper. 

A most wonderful boy was this brother, who absolutely 
hated all books, except those which he himself wrote; which 
were not only numerous, but upon every subject under the 
sun; so that, if not luminous, he could boast of being the 
most vo-luminous author of his time. He kept the nursery 
in a perfect whirl of excitement, giving burlesque lectures 
li on all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine 
Articles of our English church down to pyrotechnics, leger- 
demain, magic, — both black and white, — thaumaturgy and 
necromancy." His most popular treatise was entitled 
i; How to Raise a Grhost; and when you've got him, how to 
keep him down." He also gave lectures on physics to an 
audience in the nursery, and tried to construct an apparatus 
for walking across the ceiling like a fly, first on the princi- 
ple of skates, and afterward upon that of a humming-top. 
He was profound on the subject of necromancy, and 
frequently terrified his young admirers by speculating on 
the possibility of a general confederation, or solemn league 
and conspiracy, of the ghosts of all time against the single 
generation of men at any one time composing the garrison 
of this earth. He made a balloon; and wrote, and, with 
his brothers and sisters, performed two acts of a most har- 
rowing tragedy, in which all the personages were beheaded 
at the end of each act, leaving none to carry on the play, a 



20 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

perplexity which ultimately caused "Sultan Amurath" to 
be abandoned to the housemaids. " It is well, " observes 
De Quincey, " that my brother's path in life diverged from 
mine, else I should infallibly have broken my neck in con- 
fronting perils which brought neither honor nor profit." 

Thomas De Quincey was scarcely ten years old when he 
began laying the deep foundations of that wonderful accu- 
racy which he acquired in the Greek and Latin tongues, 
and storing the cells of his memory with wide and varied 
information by browsing freely in all the fields of litera- 
ture. After receiving instruction from a succession of 
masters, at Bath, at Winkfield, and at Manchester, he began 
to feel that profound contempt for his tutor which a boy 
of genius always feels for a pompous pedant; and, indig- 
nant because his guardians did not allow him at once to 
enter himself at the University of Oxford, he ran away at 
night, — with a small English poet in one pocket, and nine 
plays of Euripides in the other, — and began wandering 
about in Wales. Of the ups and downs of his life there, 
he has given a characteristically vivid account. Sometimes 
he slept in fine hotels, sometimes on the hillside, with 
nothing but the heavens to shelter him, fearing lest " while 
my sleeping face was upturned to the stars, some one of the 
many little Brahminical-looking cows on the Cambrian 
hills, one or other, might poach her foot into the centre of 
my face;" sometimes he dined for the small sum of six- 
pence; sometimes he wanted a dinner, and was compelled 
to relieve the cravings of his hunger by plucking and 
eating the berries from off the hedges; and sometimes he 
earned a meal and a night's lodging by writing letters for 
cottagers and for sweethearts. 

Weary of these aimless wanderings, he turned his 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 21 

back on Wales, and next found himself penniless and 
without a friend, in the solitude of London. And now 
began that painful, yet marvellous and intensely inter- 
esting episode in his history, which he has so vividly 
portrayed in the " Confessions." Now began that wear- 
ing life, which chills the spirits, saps the morality, and 
turns the blood to gall, — waiting day after day at a 
usurer's office, perpetually listening to fresh excuses for 
delay, and fresh demands for the preparation of fresh 
securities. Strangest and most thrilling of written experi- 
ence, — where, in any autobiography, at least, shall we 
find its equal? Why, instead of letting these vultures 
keep him in suspense till he was on the verge of starva- 
tion, he did not try to earn a living by his pen, or by 
teaching, is a mystery. Not only would he receive as 
heir, in four years more, — for he was now seventeen, 
— £4,000 or £5,000, an almost fabulous sum for a literary 
man of that period, but he had abundant resources 
against want in his teeming imagination and elegant 
scholarship. So great and accurate were his classical 
attainments, that his master, more than a year before, 
had proudly pointed him out to a stranger, with the 
remark: "That boy could harangue an Athenian mob 
better than you or I could address an English one/' 
Moreover, we find him, soon after this, gravely weighing 
the propriety of writing a remonstrance in Greek to the 
Bishop of Bangor, concerning some fancied insult received 
at the hands of that learned prelate. De Quincey himself 
tells us that he wielded the Greek language " with preter- 
natural address for varying the forms of expression, and 
for bringing the most refractory ideas within the harness 
of Grecian phraseology." 



22 THOMAS DE QUItfCEY. 

Of this accomplishment he was never inclined to 
vaunt; for any slight vanity which he might connect 
with a power so rarely attained, and which, under ordi- 
nary circumstances, so readily transmutes itself into 
disproportionate admiration of the author, in him, he 
tells us, was absolutely swallowed up in the tremendous 
hold taken of his entire sensibilities at that time by our 
English literature. Already at fifteen he had made 
himself familiar with the great English poets, and had 
appreciated the subtle charm of Wordsworth's poetry, 
when not fifty persons in England, who had read the 
sneering criticisms of the Edinburgh Review, knew who 
the poet that had cautioned men against " growing' 
double," was. Here we cannot help quoting from his 
'• Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature," a noble 
passage in which, in spite of his admiration of the 
Hellenic genius, he confesses the superiority of the 
English: "It is," he says, "a pitiable spectacle to any 
man of sense and feeling, who happens to be really 
familiar with the golden treasures of his own ancestral 
literature, and a spectacle which alternately moves scorn 
and sorrow, to see young people squandering their time 
and painful study upon writers not fit to unloose the 
shoes' latchets of many amongst their own compatriots: 
making painful and remote voyages after the drossy 
refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected at their feet." 

To return to the narrative: — unlike Savage's or Chat- 
terton's, De Quincey's misery at this time seems to have 
been self-inflicted. What reader of the " Confessions " 
has forgotten his description of this period, when, friend- 
less and alone, he paced up and down the never-ending- 
streets of London, with their pomp and majesty of life, 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 23 

a prey to the gnawings of hunger, and seeking by 
constant motion to baffle the piercing cold? What 
American that has paced those silent thoroughfares after 
midnight, has not thought of the boy who wandered up 
and dv^wn Oxford street, looking at the long vistas of the 
lamps, and conversing with the unfortunate creatures 
who still moved over the cold, hard stones? Who does 
not remember how, overpowered by the pangs of inan- 
ition, he fainted away in Soho Square, and was rescued 
from the very gates of death by a poor girl, who admin- 
istered to him a tumbler of spiced wine, bought with 
money which destitution had compelled her to earn by 
sin? Whose heart has not been touched by the story 
of "Poor Anne' 1 ? Her wrongs and sorrows, it has been 
well said, have doubtless caused many prayers to be 
breathed for others who, like herself, have been the 
victims of man's dishonor and sin. 

For more than sixteen weeks De Quincey was a prey 
to hunger, the bitterest that a man can suffer and sur- 
vive. During all this time he slept in the open air, and 
subsisted on a precarious charity. At last he found an 
asylum, better at least than a stone door- step for a 
night's lodging, — a large, empty house, peopled chiefly 
with rats. There at night he would lie down on the bare 
floor, with a dusty bundle of law-papers for a pillow, 
and a cloak and an old sofa-covering for bed-clothes: 
while, for a companion, he had a poor, friendless girl, — 
a deserted child, about ten years old, — who nestled close 
to him for warmth and protection against the ghosts 
which, to her infant imagination, peopled the hours of 
darkness. But it was to " poor Anne " that he looked 
for the chief solace of his miserable life. He never knew 



24 THOMAS DE QUINOEY. 

her surname, and, as he always depended upon finding 
her, he did not think it necessary to learn more. Part- 
ing from her one day with a kiss of brotherly affection, 
he set out on a business errand to Eton; but when he 
returned to London, he lost all trace of her. Night after 
night he returned to the trysting-place, and years after 
in visits to the city he peered into myriads of faces with 
the hope of descrying the well-known features; but in 
vain; poor Ann he never saw more. Again and again 
would he pace the flags of Oxford street, the " stony- 
hearted step-mother," and listen again to the tunes which 
used to solace himself and her in their dreary wander- 
ings, and with tears would exclaim: "How often have I 
wished that, as in ancient times, the curse of a father 
was believed to have a supernatural power, and pursue its 
object with a fatal necessity of fulfilment, even so the 
benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might 
have a like prerogative; might have power given it from 
above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to pursue thee into 
the central darkness of a London brothel, or, if it were 
possible, even into the darkness of a grave, there to 
awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and 
forgiveness, and of final reconciliation!" 

With the loss of Ann his Greek-street life ended; and 
becoming reconciled to his guardians by a Providential 
occurrence, he went home, and soon after entered Oxford 
University as a student. Of his life there at Worcester 
College, we know almost nothing. It was so hermit-like, 
that, for the first two years, he computes that he did not 
utter one hundred words. He had but one conversation 
with his tutor. " It consisted of three sentences," he 
savs, " two of which fell to his share, one to mine. Ox- 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 25 

ford, ancient mother! hoary with ancestral honors, time- 
honored, and, haply it may be, time-shattered power, I 
owe thee nothing! Of thy vast riches I took not a shil- 
ling, though living among multitudes who owed thee their 
daily bread." 1 When the examinations came, De Quincey 
went through the first day's trial so triumphantly that 
one of the examiners said to a resident of Worcester Col- 
lege: "You have sent us to-day the cleverest man I ever 
met with; if his viva voce examination to-morrow corre- 
spond with what he has done in writing, he will carry 
everything before him. 11 De Quincey, however, did not 
wait to be questioned further; but for some reason : — 
whether self- distrust, or a depression of spirits following 
a large dose of opium, — packed his trunk, and walked 
away from Oxford, never to return. In 1804 he made 
the acquaintance of Charles Lamb. In 1807 he was in- 
troduced to Coleridge, for whose vast intellectual powers 
he had a profound admiration; and, hearing that he was 
harassed by pecuniary troubles, contrived to convey to 
him, through Mr. Cottle's hand, the sum of £500. In 
this generous gift De Quincey was actuated by a pure 
artistic love of genius and literature. From 1808 to 1829, 
he passed nine months out of twelve among the lakes 
and mountains of Westmoreland. He took a lease of 
Wordsworth's cottage at Grasmere, wedded a gentle 
and loving wife; and amidst the delights of the lake 
scenery, a good library of 5000 volumes, lettered friends, 
and his darling drug, realized the ideal of earthly bliss 
for which the Roman poet so often sighed, and drank a 
sweet oblivion of the cares of anxious life. Speaking at 
this time of Wordsworth's good luck, for whose benefit 
some person became conveniently defunct whenever he 



26 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

wanted money, De Quincey says: " So true it is, that, just 
as Wordsworth needed a place and a fortune, the holder 
of that place or fortune was immediately served with a 
notice to surrender it. So certainly was this impressed 
upon my belief as one of the blind necessities, making 
up the prosperity and fixed destiny of Wordsworth, that, 
for myself, had I happened to know of any peculiar adapta- 
tion in an estate or office of mine to an existing need of 
Wordsworth, forthwith, and, with the speed of a man 
running for his life, I would have laid it down at his 
feet. 'Take it,' I should have said; 'take it, or in three 
weeks I shall be a dead man.' " 

It was in 1804, at the age of 19, that De Quincey first 
began taking opium, to ease rheumatic pains in the face 
and head. This dangerous remedy having been recom- 
mended to him by a fellow-student at Oxford, he entered 
a druggist's shop, and, like Thalaba . in the witches' lair, 
wound about himself the first threads of a coil, which, 
after the most gigantic efforts, he was never able wholly 
to shake off. Using opium at first to quiet pain, he quickly 
found that it had mightier and more magical effects, and 
went on increasing the doses till in 1816 he was taking 
320 grains, or 8,000 drops of laudanum a day. What a 
picture he has given us of the discovery he made! What 
a revelation the dark but subtle drug made to his spiritual 
eyes! What an agent of immortal and exalted pleasures! 
What an apocalypse of the world within him! Here was 
a panacea for sorrow and suffering, for brain-ache and 
heart-ache, — immunity from pain, and care, and aD hu- 
man woes. He swallowed a bit of the drug, and lo! the 
inner spirit's eyes were opened, — a fairy ministrant had 
burst into wings, waving a wondrous wand, — a fresh tree 



THOMAS DB QUI^CEY. 27 

of knowledge had yielded its fruit, and it seemed as good 
as it was beautiful. " Happiness might now be bought 
for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable 
ecstasies might now be had, corked up in a pint bottle; 
and peace of mind sent down in gallons by mail." Here 
we may observe that De Quince}' contradicts the state- 
ments which are usually made regarding opium. He 
denies that it intoxicates, and shows that there is such 
an insidiousness about it, that it scarcely seems to be a 
gratification of the senses. The pleasure of wine is one 
that rises to a certain pitch, and then degenerates into 
stupidity, while that of opium remains stationary for eight 
or ten hours. Again, the influence of wine tends to dis- 
order the mind, while opium tends to exalt the ideas, 
and yet to contribute to harmony and order in their ar- 
rangement. " The opium-eater feels that the diviner part 
of his nature is uppermost; that is, the moral affections 
are in a state of cloudless serenity, and over all is the 
great light of the majestic intellect/' 

Up to the middle of 1817 De Quincey judges himself 
to have been a happy man; and nothing can be more 
charming than the picture he draws of the interior of 
his cottage in a stormy winter night, with " warm hearth- 
rugs, tea from an eternal tea-pot," — eternal a parte ante 
and a parte post, for he drank from eight in the evening- 
till four in the morning, — " a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, 
curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, whilst 
the wind and rain are raging audibly without, 
'As heaven and earth they would together mell." 1 
Alas ! that this blissful state could not continue ! But the 
very drug which had revealed to him such an abyss of 
divine enjoyment, — which had given to him the keys of 



28 THOMAS BE QUINOEY. 

Paradise, causing to pass before his spirit's eyes a never- 
ending succession of splendid imagery, the gorgeous col- 
oring of sky and cloud, the pomp of woods and forests. 
the majesty of boundless oceans, and the grandeur of 
imperial cities, while to the ears, cleansed from their 
mortal infirmities, were borne the sublime anthem of the 
winds and waves, and a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs 
and harping symphonies. — this very power became event- 
ually its own avenging Nemesis, and inflicted torments 
compared with which those of Prometheus were as the 
bites of a gnat. 

Of all the torments which opium inflicts upon its vo- 
tary, perhaps there is no one more destructive of his 
peace than the sense of incapacity and feebleness. — of 
inability to perform duties which conscience tells him he 
must not neglect. The opium-eater, De Quincey tells us. 
loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations ; he wishes 
and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes 
possible, and feels to be exacted by duty: but the springs 
of his will are all broken, and his intellectual apprehen- 
sion of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not 
of execution only, but even of power to attempt. " He 
lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies 
in sight of all that he would fain perforin, just as a 
man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor 
of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury 
or outrage offered to some object of his tender est love: 
— he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; 
he would lay down his life if he might but get up and 
walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even 
attempt to rise." 

Of the cup of horrors which opium finally presents to - 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 29 

its devotees, De Quincey drank to the dregs, especially in 
his dreams at night, when the fearful and shadowy phan- 
toms that flitted by his bedside made his sleep insuffera- 
ble by the terror and anguish they occasioned. Of these 
dreams, as portrayed in the " Confessions " and some of 
his other writings, we doubt if it would be possible to 
find a parallel in any literature, ancient or modern. 
Sometimes they are blended with appalling associations, 
— encompassed with the power of darkness, or shrouded 
with the mysteries of death and the gloom of the grave. 
Now they are pervaded with unimaginable horrors of 
oriental imagery and mythological tortures; the dreamer 
is oppressed with tropical heat and vertical sunlight, and 
brings together all the physical prodigies of China and 
Hindostan. He runs into pagodas, and is fixed for cen-' 
turies at the summit, or in secret rooms; he flees from 
• the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia ; 
Vishnu hates him; Seeva lays wait for him; he comes 
suddenly on Isis and Osiris; he has done a deed, they 
say, at which the ibis and the crocodile tremble; he is 
buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mum- 
mies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of 
eternal pyramids. He is kissed with cancerous kisses by 
crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable, slimy 
things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. 

•'Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incar- 
ceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an 
Oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two 
slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All 
before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main agents were 
ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed crocodile 
became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. T was 
compelled to live with him ; and (as was always the case, almost, in my 
dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinese 



30 THOMAS DE QUI^CEY. 

houses with cane tables, etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc.. soon 
became instinct with life: the abominable head of the crocodile, and his 
leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I 
stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt 
my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very 
same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I 
am sleeping), and instantly I awoke : it was broad noon, and my children 
were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside; come to show me their colored 
shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest 
that so awful was the transition from the damned crocodile, and the other 
unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent 
human natures and of infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of 
mind. I wept, and could not forbear it. as I kissed their faces." 

Anon, there would come suddenly a dream of a far 
different character, — a tumultuous dream, — commencing 
with music, and a multitudinous movement of infinite 
cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. 
The morning was come of a mighty day, — a day of crisis 
and of ultimate hope for human nature, then suffering 
mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. 

"Somewhere, but I knew not where,— somehow, but I knew not how,— 
by some beings, I knew not by whom,— a battle, a strife, an agony was 
traveling through all its stages,— was evolving itself like the catastrophe of 
some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, 
from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its 
undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where, of necessity, we make 
ourselves central to every movement,) had the power, and yet had not the 
power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and 
yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon 
me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. 'Deeper than ever plummet 
sounded,' I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some 
greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause, than ever yet the sword 
had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurry 
ings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives.— I knew not whether 
from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human 
faces; and, at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the 
features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed.— 
and clasped hands, with heart-breaking partings, and then — everlasting fare- 
wells; and with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed, when the incestuous 
mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated.— 
everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated,— everlasting 
farewells!" 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 31 

When did ever man, like this man, realize " the fierce 
vexation of a dream 1 ' ? As with Byron's Manfred, the voice 
of incantation rang forever in his ears: — 

"Though thy slumber may be deep. 
Yet thy spirit shall not sleep; 
There are shades which will not vanish. 
There are thoughts thou canst not banish; 
— And to thee shall night deny 
All the quiet of her sky." 

How fearfully does he make us feel that 

•This is truth the poet sings. 
That a sorrow's crown of sorrows is remembering happier things;" 

and we would fain say to him: 

'•Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof. 
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof." 

Here, were it not needless, we might pause to speak of 
the egregious folly of those persons who fancy that by 
swallowing opt inn like De Quincey, they may have De 
Quincey's visions and dreams. As well might they expect 
to produce an explosion by touching a match, not to gun- 
powder, but to a lump of lead. Opium was, indeed, the 
teasing irritant of De Quincey's genius; but the genius 
was in him, or the visions would not have come. Dryden 
was most inspired after a dose of salts: but a common- 
place man will never be able to dash off an "Alexander's 
Feast," though he take pills till he bankrupt Brandreth. 
He will have " all the contortions of the Sibyl without 
the inspiration.'" A booby will remain a booby still, 
though he feed upon the nectar and ambrosia of the gods. 

Having yielded to the Oircean spells of opium, De 
Quincey lay from 1817 to 1821 in a kind of intellectual 
torpor, utterly incapable of sustained exertion. At last, 
his nightly visions became so insupportable that he deter- 



32 THOMAS DE QUINCET. 

mined to abjure the deadly drug; and, after a desperate 
struggle, the foul fiend was nearly exorcised. But long 
after its departure, he suffered most keenly; his sleep 
was still tumultuous; and like the gates of Paradise to 
our first parents when looking back from afar, it was 
still (in the tremendous line of Milton) 

"• With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms." 

It was at this time that he began those literary labors 
which have made his fame, and which have enabled the 
world to see what mighty results he might have accom- 
plished, if opium had not enfeebled his powers. Writing 
the first part of the " Confessions " in 1821, he from that 
time plied his pen with great, but fitful industry, on vari- 
ous publications, such as " Blackwood's Magazine," " Tart's," 
the "North British Review," "Hogg's Instructor," and the 
"Encyclopaedia Britannica." Till 1827 he continued to 
live at Grasmere, with occasional visits to London, when he 
changed his residence for two years to Edinburgh, — after 
which he took up his abode again among the Westmore- 
land hills, in a " rich farm-house, flowing with milk and 
honey, with mighty barns and spacious pastures," near 
his former cottage at Grasmere. To this charming rural 
retreat he invited Charles Knight and his family to visit 
him, in a letter such as only the Opium-Eater could 
write. "And now, my friend," he urges, " think what a 
glorious El Dorado of milk and butter, and cream cheeses. 
and all other dairy products, I can offer, you morning, 
noon, and night. You may absolutely bathe in new 
milk, or even in cream; and you shall bathe, if you like 
it. I know that you care not much for luxuries for the 
dinner-table; else, though our luxuries are few and 



THOMAS DE QU1NCEY. 33 

simple, I could offer .you some .temptations,— mountain 
lamb equal to Welsh; char famous to the antipodes: 
trout and pike from the very lake within twenty-five feet 
of our door; bread, such as you have never presumed to 
dream of, made of our own wheat, not doctored and 
separated by the usual miller's process into fine insip 
flour, and coarse, that is, merely dirty-looking white, but 
all ground down together, which is the sole receipt 
(experto crede) for having rich, lustrous, red-brown, 
ambrosial bread; new potatoes, of celestial earthiness and 
raciness, which, with us, last to October; and finally, 
milk, milk, milk — cream, cream, cream, (hear it, thou 
benighted Londoner!) in which you must and shall 
bathe. 1 ' De Qumcey's last years were spent at Lasswade, 
near Edinburgh, Scotland, where he died December 8, 
1859, in his seventy-fifth year. During the last three 
or four years of his life, he suffered exquisite pain from 
a constant gnawing in the stomach, which impelled him 
some days to walk fifteen miles at a time, and which he 
believed was owing to the presence there of a voracious 
living parasite. But for his obligations to his wife and 
daughters, he declared, the temptation to commit suicide 
would have been greater than he could have resisted; 
and he repeatedly announced his intention of bequeath- 
ing his body to the surgeons for a -post mortem examina- 
tion into his strange disease. 

Physically, ' De Quincey was a frail, slender-looking 
man. exceedingly diminutive in stature, with small, 
clearly-chiselled features, as pale almost as alabaster, a 
large head, and a singularly high, square forehead. The 
head showed behind a want of animal force. The lips 
were curiously expressive and subtle in their character: 



34 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

the eyes, that seemed to have seen much sorrow, peered 
out of two rings of darkness; and there was a peculiarly 
high and regular arch in the wrinkles of his brow, 
which was "loaded with thought." All that met him 
were struck with the measured, silvery, yet somewhat 
hollow and unearthly tones of his voice, the more 
impressive that the flow of his talk was unhesitating and 
unbroken. Though capable of undergoing a great deal 
of labor and fatigue, he declares that his body was the 
very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human system, 
and that he " should almost have been ashamed to 
bequeath his wretched structure to any respectable dog." 
Of his odd, eccentric character, no adequate account ever 
lias been, or, probably ever will be given, so removed 
were his from all the normal conditions of human nature. 
In his boyhood the shiest of children, " naturally dedi- 
cated to despondency," he was passionately fond of peace. 
— had a perfect craze for being despised, — considered 
contempt as the only security for unmolested repose, — 
and always sought to hide his accomplishments from the 
curiosity of strangers. He tells us humorously, and no 
doubt truthfully, how, after he had reached manhood, he 
was horrified at a party in London when he saw a large 
number of guests filing in one by one, and guessed from 
their looks that they had come to "lionize" the Opium- 
Eater. It has been questioned if he ever knew what it 
is " to eat a good dinner," or could even comprehend the 
nature of such a felicity. He had an ear most perfectly 
attuned to the enjoyment of " beauty born of murmuring 
sound," and one of his most exquisite pleasures was 
listening to instrumental, and especially vocal, music: 
yet a discord, a wrong note, was agony to him; and it 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 35 

is said that, on one occasion, he with ludicrous solem- 
nity apostrophized his unhappy fate as one over whom a 
cloud of the darkest despair had been drawn, because a 
peacock had just come to live within hearing distance 
of him, and not only the terrific yells of the accursed 
biped pierced him to the soul, but the continued terror 
of their recurrence kept his nerves in agonizing tension 
during the intervals of silence. In this sensitiveness to 
harsh noises he reminds one of the poet Beattie, who 
denounces chanticleer for his lusty proclamation of morn- 
ing to his own and the neighboring farm-yards, in terms 
hardly merited by a Nero. 

In everything that concerned the happiness of others, 
DeQuincey was the very soul of courtesy. A gentleman 
who visited him repeatedly at Lasswade, tells us that for 
every woman, however humble, he seemed to have the 
profoundest reverence; and when, in walking along the 
country highway together, they met any person in female 
attire, however lowly or meanly clad, — were she fine lady 
or servant girl, — DeQuincey would turn aside from the 
road, back up against the hedge, and pulling off his hat, 
bow and continue bowing profoundly, till she had passed 
beyond them. While listening to the mythical and fear- 
fully wearisome recital of an old crone at Melrose Abbey, 
he continued bowing, with his hat off, to the end, with as 
much deference as if she had been a duchess. A corre- 
spondent of a New York journal, who spent some hours at 
his Scottish home, gives an additional illustration of his 
tender regard for the feelings of the lowly: — 

•• There was a few moments' pause in the ' table talk, 1 when one of the 
daughters asked our opinion of Scotland and the Scotch. De Quincey had 
been in a kind of reverie, from which the question aroused him. Turning 
to us. he said, in a kindly, half-paternal manner, l The servant that waits at 



36 THOMAS 1)E QUINCE Y. 

my table is a Scotch girl. It may be that you have something severe to say 
about Scotland. I know that I like the English church and dislike many 
things about the Puritanical Scotch; but I never utter anything that might 
wound my servant. Heaven knows that the lot of a poor servant girl is hard 
enough, and if there is any person in the world of whose feelings I am 
especially tender, it is those of a female compelled to do for us our drudgery. 
Speak as freely as you choose, but please reserve your censure, if you have 
any, for the moments when she is absent from the room.' ( Tin gentilhomme 
est toujours un gentilhomme, a man of true sensibility and courtesy will 
manifest it on all occasions, toward the powerless as well as toward the 
strong. J When the dinner was ended and the waiting girl had left, his elo- 
quent tongue gave the Ultra-Puritanism of Scotland such a castigation, that 
we looked around us with a shudder, expecting to see the ghost of John 
Knox stalking into the room, fluid-hot with holy wrath." 

Though the author of a profound, philosophic treatise 
on political economy, De Quincey was in all money matters 
a child. Brooding over great intellectual problems, he 
gave no thought to pounds, shillings, and pence, or ques- 
tions touching the payment of weekly bills. Only the most 
immediate, craving necessities could extract from him an 
acknowledgment of the vulgar agencies by which men 
subsist in civilized society; and only while the necessity 
lasted, did the acknowledgment exist. He would arrive 
late at a friend's door, and represent in his usual silvery 
voice and measured rhetoric, the urgent necessity he had 
for the immediate and absolute use of a certain sum of 
money; and if he thought the friend hesitated, or the time 
seemed long before the required loan was forthcoming, — a 
loan, perhaps, of seven shillings and sixpence, — he would 
rummage his waistcoat pocket in search of* a document 
which, he would confidently declare, was an ample security, 
and which would prove to be, when the crumpled paper 
was spread out, a bank note for £50 ! It was the opinion 
of those who knew him well, that, had the bank note been 
accepted, his friend would never have heard anything more 
of the transaction. 



THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 37 

Mr. John Hill Burton, in " The Book-Hunter," to which we 
are indebted for these particulars, has related a variety of 
other incidents, similarly illustrative of De Quincey's char- 
acter. Sometimes a visitor of De Quincey, made oblivious of 
the lapse of time by the charm of his conversation, would dis- 
cover, at a late hour, that " lang Scots 1 miles v lay between 
his host's and his own home. Thereupon De Quincey would 
volunteer to accompany the forlorn traveler, and guide 
him through the difficulties of the way; for had not his 
midnight wanderings and musings made him familiar with 
all the intricacies of the road? Roofed by a huge wide- 
awake, which makes his tiny figure look like the stalk of some 
great fungus, with a lantern of more than common dimen- 
sions in his hand, away he goes, down the wooded path, up 
the steep bank, along the brawling stream, and across the 
waterfall; and ever as he goes, there comes from him a 
continued stream of talk concerning the philosophy of 
Immanuel Kant, and other kindred themes. Having seen 
his guest home, he would still continue walking on, until, 
weariness overtaking him, he would take his rest like some 
poor mendicant, under a hayrick, or in a wet furrow. No 
wonder that he used to denounce, with fervent eloquence, 
that barbarous and brutal provision of the law of England 
which rendered sleeping in the open air an act of vagrancy, 
and so punishable, if the sleeper could not give a satis- 
factory account of himself; " a thing," adds Mr. Burton, 
" which he could never give under any circumstances. 11 
His social habits were as eccentric as everything else per- 
taining to him. • Being detained one evening at Prof. 
Wilson's in Edinburgh, when in a great hurry, by a 
shower, he remained nearly a year. Mrs. Gordon, Prof. 
Wilson's daughter, states that at this time his dose of 



38 THOMAS DE^QUOTOEY. 

laudanum was an ounce a day.— an amount which, though 
small compared with what he had formerly taken, was 
sufficient to prostrate animal life in the morning. " It was 
no unfrequent sight,' 1 she says, " to find him in his room, 
lying upon the rug in front of the fire, his head resting 
upon a book, with his arms crossed over his breast, plunged 
into profound slumber. For several hours he would lie in 
this state, until the effect of the torpor had passed away." 

When he was invited to a dinner-party, no one ever 
thought of waiting dinner for him. He came and departed 
always at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punct- 
ualities, nor burdening others by exacting them. " The 
festivities of the afternoon are far on when a commotion 
is heard in the hall, as if some dog, or other stray animal 
had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest 
tells him of the arrival; he opens the door, and fetches in 
the little stranger. What can it be? a street-boy of some 
sort'? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great coat, 
very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to 
the chin, where it meets the fragments of a parti-colored 
belcher handkerchief: on his feet are list-shoes, covered 
with snow, for it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers, 
— some one suggests that they are inner linen garments 
blackened with writing-ink; but De Quincey never would 
have been at the trouble so to disguise them. What can 
be the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing in 
the world, — it consisted of the fragments of apparel nearest 
at hand. Had chance thrown to him a court single-breasted 
coat, with a bishop's apron, a kilt, and top boots, in these 
he would have made his entry."' One of his peculiarities 
was an intense dislike for shirts, — of wearing which he was 
as innocent as Adam.f Unlike Coleridge's father, who, 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 39 

starting on a journey with six shirts, came home wearing 
the entire half dozen, De Quincey sloughed off this garment 
almost as soon as his good wife had persuaded him to put 
it on. 

De Quincey was *a prodigious reader, had an anaconda- 
like digestion, and assimilated his mental food with amazing- 
rapidity. An ardent lover of books, he cared nothing for 
pet editions. — the niceties and luxuries of paper, printing, 
and binding. Tree-calf and sheep, Turkey-morocco and 
muslin, — were all one to him. His pursuit of books was 
like that of the savage who seeks but to appease the hunger 
of the moment. Mr. Burton says that if his intellectual 
appetite craved a passage in the (Edipus, or in the Medeia, 
or in Plato's Republic, he would be content with the most 
tattered fragment of the volume, if it contained what he 
wanted; but on the other hand, he would not hesitate to 
seize upon your tall copy in Russia, gilt and tooled. Nor 
would he hesitate to lay his sacrilegious hands upon an 
edit to pr'uiceps, — even to wrench out the twentieth volume 
of your " Encyclopedic Methodique " or " Ersch und Gruber," 
leaving a vacancy like an extracted front tooth, and carry- 
ing it off to his den of Cacus. " Some legend there is," 
says the same amusing writer, " of a book-creditor having 
forced his way into the Cacus den, and there seen a sort of 
rubble work inner wall of volumes, with their edges out- 
ward: while others, bound and unbound, the plebeian 
sheepskin and the aristocratic Russian, were squeezed into 
certain tubs drawn from the washing establishment of a 
confiding landlady." In common with the whole tribe of 
book- borrowers, he rarely returned a book loaned to him; 
folio or quarto, single or one of a set; though sometimes 
the book was recognized at large, greatly enhanced in value 



40 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

by a profuse edging of manuscript notes. When short of 
writing paper, he never hesitated to tear out the leaves of a 
broad-margined book, whether his own or belonging to 
another. It is even reported that he once gave in " copy"* 
written "on the edges of a tall octavo Somnium Scipionis; 
and as he did not obliterate the original matter, the printer 
was rather puzzled, and made a funny jumble between the 
letter-press Latin and the manuscript English." It is 
a remarkable fact that, in spite of these piratical proceed- 
ings, none of his friends ever complained of him. They 
never said, as did Southey of Wordsworth, that letting him 
into one's library was " like letting a bear' into a tulip 
garden." 

DeQuincey's indifference to the fate of his printed writ- 
ings is a peculiarity not less marked than the other traits 
of his strange, prismatic genius. Not till the very end of 
his life, and then, we believe, only at the suggestion of an 
American publisher, did he set about collecting his scattered 
papers, — a feat which he once declared "that not the 
archangel Gabriel, nor his multipotent adversary, durst 
attempt. ,, It is to the honor of our country that, like the 
splendid essays of Macaulay, the twenty-four volumes of 
the Opium-Eater's writings were first published in Boston: 
and it would be pleasant to see confirmed a statement we 
have met with in a New York newspaper, that during the 
closing years of his life, the broad and brilliant sunrise of 
his fame in the United States did more than any other 
single thing to stimulate him to continuous literary labor 
and to kindle his literary enthusiasm. 

Turning from De Quincey the man to De Quincey the 
author, the first thing that strikes us is the extraordinary 
depth and compass of his knowledge. He never seems to 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 41 

put forth all his learning on any subject, nor are there 
any signs of " cram " in his writings. His thought comes 
from a brimming reservoir, and never shows the mud 
at the bottom. Indeed, we know of no man who more 
completely realizes his own wonderful description of a 
great scholar, as "one endowed not merely with a great 
memory, but with an infinite and electrical power of 
combination, bringing together from the four winds, 
like the angels of the resurrection, what else were but 
the dust of dead men's bones, and breathing into them 
the unity of life." 

When we consider the number and variety of the 
themes he has discussed, many of them of the most 
recondite, out-of-the-way character, and especially when 
we think of his digressions, quotations, notes, allusions, 
and extrajudicial opinions, we are astonished at the vast 
and eccentric range of his reading, and still more at the 
tenacity of a memory by which such portentous acqui- 
sitions could be held. He seems to have been his own 
encyclopaedia, quoting, wherever he chanced to be, all 
that he wished to quote, even dates and references, with- 
out the aid of a library. Ranging over all the fields of 
inquiry, he is perpetually surprising you with side 
glimpses and hints of truths which he cannot at present 
follow up. Often on a topic seemingly the most remote 
from abstract philosophy, through a mere allusion or 
hint, chasms are opened to you in the depths of specu- 
lation, and the ghosts of buried mediaeval problems are 
made to stalk before you. We know of no other memory 
which is so large as De Quincey's, and yet so personal : 
so ample, and yet so accurate; which is at once so object- 
ive, and yet so subjective, — giving the vividness of self 
2* 



42 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

to outward acquisition, and to the consciousness of self 
the enlargement, of imperial knowledge. 

Again, it is rarely that a scholar^ especially one who 
has spent so much time in the nooks and hidden corners 
of learning, has been so close an observer of character. 
All of his works, but especially his "Autobiographic 
Sketches " and " Literary Reminiscences," are strewn 
with passages showing that while it was a peculiarity 
of his intellect to be exquisitely introspective, he was 
yet marvellously swift in his appreciations of men and 
things, and noted personal traits with Boswellian minute- 
ness. In discovering motives and feelings by their outward 
manifestations, — by the most microscopic peculiarities of 
look, shape, tone, or gesture, — he was as acute as Lavater. 
Another rare endowment, which he has to a wonderful 
degree, is the power of detecting resemblances, — hidden 
analogies, — parallelisms, connecting things otherwise 
wholly remote. Often, he tells us, he was mortified 
by compliments to his memory, which, in fact, were due 
to " the far higher faculty of an electric aptitude for 
seizing analogies, and, by means of these aerial pontoons, 
passing over like lightning from one topic to another." 
To this power we may trace much of the excellence of 
his criticism, the keenness of penetration with which he 
sees, not only into the genius, but all round the life of 
an author. Perhaps no literary critic has equalled him 
in making incidents in a writer's life, unnoticed by other 
men, flash light upon his genius; and, again, in making 
hidden peculiarities of his genius clear up mysteries in 
his life. Hence he never repeats the old, worn-out 
commonplaces of criticism, but, breaking away from the 
traditional views, startles you with opinions as novel as 
they are acute and ingenious. 



THOMAS DE QUI^CEY. 43 

Who can forget his original and admirable distinction 
between the literature of knowledge and the literature of 
power? "What," he asks, "do you learn from Paradise 
Lost? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a 
cookery book? Something new, something you did not 
know before, in every paragraph. But would you there- 
fore put the wretched cookery book on a higher level of 
estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to 
Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate 
items are still but a million of advancing steps on the 
same earthly level; what you owe is jxnver; that is, 
exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of 
sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each 
separate influx is a step upward, — a step ascending, as 
upon a Jacob's ladder, from earth to mysterious altitudes 
above the earth.* All the steps of knowledge, from the 
first to the last, carry you farther on the same plane, 
but could never raise you one foot above your ancient 
level of earth; whereas the very first step in power is a 
flight, is an ascending, into another element, where earth 
is forgotten. " 

Again: how charming to a lover of intellectual sub- 
tlety is his reasoning concerning the Essenes! With 
what a keenness of philosophical criticism, — with what 
a prodigality of learning, logic, and illustration, — does 
De Quincey refute the popular dogmas about Pope ; that 
he was a writer of the Gallic school; that he was a second 
or third rate poet, and that his distinctive merit was cor- 
rectness; when he was, in fact, a great, impassioned, 
musical thinker of social life, who had in his soul innate 
germs of grandeur, which did not open into power, or 
which had but an imperfect growth. Again: how adroitly 



44 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

he unmasks and scalps the superficially omniscient and 
overrated Brougham, who has " deluged Demosthenes with 
his wordy admiration!" With how firm a grasp he 
throttles "Junius"; how keenly he dissects that brilliant 
mocking-bird, Sheridan; and how hollow the pompous 
Parr feels in his grip! This exquisite subtlety in dis- 
criminating the resemblances and differences of things is 
one of the most remarkable traits of De Quincey's genius. 
In this, as in the wide range of his intellectual sympathies, 
and in his habit of minutely dissecting his own emotions, 
he resembled Coleridge; but in other respects they stood in 
almost polar antithesis. De Quince}^ it has been truly said, 
was a Greek; but Coleridge was essentially a German in 
his culture, tastes, and habits of mind. De Quincey had 
a dry, acute, critical intellect, piercing as a sword-blade, 
and as brilliant and relentless; Coleridge was a poet, of 
" imagination all compact," with a mind of tropical fruit- 
fulness and splendor, and a sensibility as delicate as a 
woman's. In thus differentiating De Quincey from the 
" noticeable man, with large, gray eyes," we would not 
intimate that, with all his intellectual acumen, he had 
not something far better than this metaphysic, hair- 
splitting talent. Though he absolutely revels in nice 
distinctions and scrupulous qualifications, he was not a 
dry 'Duns Scotus, a juiceless Thomas Aquinas. While 
his logic cut like a razor, his imagination burned like a 
furnace. Though he had a schoolman's passion for logical 
forms, and could have beaten the enemies of Reuchlin at 
their own weapons, his rhetorical aptitudes were profound 
and varied, and his speculative imagination was little less 
than wonderful in its range and power. 

De Quincey's humor is of a kind which is not easy to 



THOMAS DE QUl'KCEY. 45 

characterize. Like everything belonging to him, it is odd, 
unique, as original as his genius. Always playful and 
stingless, it takes at one time the form of banter, at 
another of mock dignity. Now it speaks with admiration, 
or with a dry, business tone of things usually regarded 
with indignation or horror; now it mocks at gravity, 
cracks jests upon venerable persons or institutions, quizzes 
the owls of society, and pulls the beards of dignitaries. 
At one hour it greets us in the grave robe of the critic, 
and pokes fun at the learned; at another, in the scarlet 
dress of the satirist, and blasts hypocrisy with its ridi- 
cule; and again it comes to us in motley, with cap and 
bells, and reminds us of Touchstone's wise fooling and 
the mingled pathos and bitterness of the poor fool in Lear. 
One of the commonest forms of De Quincey's playfulness 
is exaggeration, — the expenditure of pages of the gravest 
and most elaborate ratiocination upon a trifle, — the devo- 
tion of a senior wrangler's analytic powers to the dissec- 
tion of the merest crotchet; reminding one in this, it has 
been well said, of a great musical composer, who seats 
himself before a stately organ, and choosing as his theme 
some street song, "0 dear, what can the matter be?" or 
"Polly, put the kettle on," pursues it through figures of 
surpassing pomp and orchestral tumult, — glorifying it 
into intricate harmonies, and transfiguring its original 
meanness into bewildering bravura and interminable fan- 
tasia. The following passage from " The English Mail 
Coach," while it illustrates in some degree De Quincey's 
peculiar humor, interveined, as it often is, with grave 
remark, is also a fine specimen of his measured and stately 
style : 

"The modern modes of traveling cannot compare with the mail-coach 
system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, but not, how- 



46 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

ever, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon 
alien evidence; as, for instance, because somebody says that we have gone 
fifty miles in the hour, or upon the evidence of a result, as that actually we 
find ourselves in York four hours after leaving London. Apart from such an 
assertion, or such a result, I am little aware of the pace. But, seated on 
the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the 
velocity. On this system the word was — Non magna loquimur. as upon 
railways, but magna vivimus. The vital experience of the glad animal sen- 
sibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard 
our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the 
product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was 
incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of an animal, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic 
muscles, and echoing hoofs. This speed was incarnated in the visible conta- 
gion amongst brutes of some impulse, that, radiating into their natures, had 
yet its centre and beginning in man. The sensibility of the horse, uttering 
itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a 
movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first,— but the intervening 
link that connected them, that spread the earthquake of the battle into the 
eyeball of the horse, was the heart of man,— kindling in the rapture of the 
fiery strife, and then propagating its own tumults by motions and gestures 
to the sympathies, more or less dim, in his servant, the horse 

•But now. on the new system of traveling, iron tubes and boilers have 
disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion. Nile nor 
Trafalgar has power any more to raise an extra bubble in a steam kettle. 
The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever: man's imperial nature no longer 
seuds itself forward through the electric sensibility of the horse; interagen- 
cies are gone in the mode of communication between the horse and his master, 
out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists 
that hid, or sudden blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight 
solitudes that awed. Tidings, fitted to convulse all nations, must hencefor- 
wards travel by culinary process; and the trumpet that once announced from 
afar the laurelled mail, heart-shaking, when heard screaming on the wind, 
and advancing through the darkness to every village or solitary house on its 
route, has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler." 

The crowning achievement of De Quincey in this depart- 
ment is his "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts," 
which all will admit to he a masterpiece of cynicism, with- 
out a parallel in our literature. The principle on which 
this paper is based, is that everything is to be judged, 
in an aesthetic point of view, by the end it professes to 
accomplish, and is to be considered good or bad. — that is. 
for its own purposes, — according to the degree in which 



THOMAS DH QFINCFA. 47 

it accomplishes that end. As Aristotle would say, "The 
virtue of a thing is to be judged by its end." For ex- 
ample, dirt, according to Lord Palmerston's famous defini- 
tion, is only " matter in the wrong place/ 1 Put it at the 
bottom of a fruit-tree, and so tar is it from being a nui- 
sance, that the dirtier it is the better. 80 with murder; 
leave out of view the ultimate purpose of the thing, and 
take it simply on its own merits, and the more murder- 
ous it is, the more does it come up to its fundamental 
idea. It follows that there are clever, brilliant, even ideal 
murders, and that they may be criticised by dilettanti 
and amateurs, like a painting, or statue, or other work 
of art. In a similar spirit De Quincey claims that a proper 
proportion of rogues is essential to the proper mounting 
of a metropolis. — that is, the idea is not complete without 
them. 

What can be more exquisite than the fooling in the 
following passage: "Believe me, it is not necessary to a 
man's respectability that he should commit a. murder. 
Many a man has passed through life most respectably, 
without attempting any species of homicide, good, bad. 
or indifferent. It is your first duty to ask -yourself, quid 
mfoant humeri, quid ferre recusent? — we cannot all be 
brilliant men in this life. ... A man came to me as 
the candidate for the place of my servant, just then va- 
cant. He had the reputation of having dabbled a little 
in our art, some said, not without merit. What startled 
me, however, was, that he supposed this art to be part 
of the regular duties in my service. Now that was a thing 
I would not allow; so I said at once: 'If once a man 
indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think 
little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to 



48 • THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 

drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility 
and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, 
you never know where you are to stop. Many a man 
has dated his ruin from some murder or other that per- 
haps he thought little of at the time. Principiis obsta, — 
that's my rule." 

Of pathos, we need only cite "The Confessions, 1 ' "The 
Vision of a Sudden Death," " Joan of Arc," and " The 
Household Wreck," to show that De Quincey was a con- 
summate master. The fine paper on " The English Mail 
Coach," of which we have already spoken, has several 
passages which show that he had an ear delicately at- 
tuned to 

11 The still sad music of humanity," 

— one of which we cannot forbear quoting. After stating 
that " the mail-coaches it was that distributed over the 
face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, 
the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of 
Vittoria, of Waterloo," he proceeds to describe a ride to 
London in a coach that bore the tidings of a great vic- 
tory in Spain. At one village where the coach stopped. 
a poor woman, seeing De Quincey with a newspaper in 
his hand, came to him. She had a son there in the 23d 
Dragoons. "My heart sank within me as she made that 
answer." This regiment, originally three hundred and 
fifty strong, had made a sublime charge that day, par- 
alyzing a French column six thousand strong, and had 
come back one in four ! De Quincey told her all that he 
had the heart to tell her of that dearly bought victory, 
but — 

lt I told her not of the hloody price that had been paid. 1 showed her 
not the funeral banners under which the noble regiment lay sleeping. But 
I told her how those dear children of England, officers and privates, had 



THOMAS DE QUI2STCEY. 49 

leaped their horses over all obstacles as gayly as hunters to the morning's 
chase. I told her how they rode their horses into the mists of death, (say- 
ing to myself, but not saying to her) and laid down their young lives for 
thee, O mother England ! as willingly,— poured out their noble blood as 
cheerfully,— as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants, they had rested 
their heads upon their mother's knees, or sunk to sleep in her arms. Strange 
as it is, she seemed to have no fear of her son's safety. Fear was swallowed 
up in joy so absolutely that in the mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the 
poor woman threw her arms round my neck, as she thought of her son, and 
gave to me the kiss which was secretly meant for him.' 1 '' 

De Quincey is not only a great master of pathos, but his 
genius for the sublime is equally manifest; it would be 
hard to name a modern English writer who had a mind 
more sensitive to emotions of grandeur. One of the most 
striking peculiarities of his sensuous framework, was his 
exquisite sensibility to the luxuries and grandeurs of sound. 
Keenly alive to the pomps and glories of the eye, it was 
through the ear that he drank in the highest intoxications 
of sense; and to obtain " a grand debauch" of that nature, 
there was hardly any sacrifice that he was not willing to 
make. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that his 
style is preeminently musical, and that from music he 
draws many of his aptest and most impressive metaphors. 

De Quincey's dialectic skill and ability in handling prac- 
tical themes are shown in his "Logic of Political Economy," 
a work in which he defends and illustrates the doctrines of 
Ricardo, and which drew forth the praise of J. S. Mill. In 
speaking of his motives for writing this treatise, he says of 
certain others on the same subject: " I saw that these were 
generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intel- 
lect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in 
wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up 
the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them 
between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or 
bray their fungous heads to powder with a lady's fan." 
3 



50 THOMAS I)E QUINCEY. 

The great, crowning glory of De Quincey is his style, 
upon which he bestowed incredible labor, — rewriting some 
pages of the " Confessions.'" as he told a friend of ours, not 
less than sixty times. His style is an almost perfect vehicle 
of his ideas, — accommodating itself, as it does, with mar- 
vellous flexibility, to the highest flights of imagination, to 
the minutest subtleties of reasoning, and to the wildest 
freaks of humor, — in short, to all the exigencies of his 
thought. In his hands our stiff Saxon language becomes 
almost as ductile as the Greek. Ideas that seem to defy 
expression. — ideas so subtle, or so vague and elusive, that 
most thinkers find it difficult to contemplate them at all, — 
are conveyed on his page wjth a nicety, a felicity of phrase. 
that might almost provoke the envy of Shakespeare. It is 
the most passionately eloquent, the most thoroughly poetical 
prose, our language has produced, the organ-like variety 
and grandeur of its cadence affecting the mind as only per- 
fect verse affects it. Grave, stately, and sustained, when 
expressing solemn and imperial thoughts, — light and care- 
lessly graceful when playing with the theme, it is at once 
sharp and sweet, flowing and pithy, condensed and expan- 
sive: now expressing chapters in a sentence, now amplifying 
a single thought into pages of rich, glowing, and delightful 
eloquence. Even Milton, in his best prose, is not a. greater 
master of melody and harmony; and in some of the grandest 
passages, where the thought and feeling go on swelling and 
deepening from the first note to the last in a lofty climax, 
the language of De Quincey can be compared only to the 
swell and crash of an orchestra. 

It is true his style bristles with scholasticisms: but how 
they tell! You feel, as you read, that here is a man who 
has gauged the potentiality of every word he uses : who has 



THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 51 

analyzed the siraples of all his compound phrases. The 
chief characteristic of his style is elaborate stateliness; his 
principal figure, personification. Generally his sentences 
are long; the very opposite of those asthmatic and short- 
winded ones which he pronounces a defect in French 
writers; and they are as full of life and joints as a serpent. 
It was said of Coleridge that no stenographer could do 
justice to his lectures, because, though he spoke deliber- 
ately, yet it was impossible, from the first part of his 
sentences, even to guess how they would end. Each clause 
was a new surprise, and the close often as unexpected as a 
thunderbolt. So with the Opium-Eater : "the great Pla- 
tonic year," as Hazlitt sa}'s of Sir Thomas Browne, "re- 
volves in one of his periods; 1 ' or, as De Quincey himself 
says of Bishop Berkeley, " he passes with the utmost ease 
and .speed from tar-water to the Trinity, from a moleheap 
to the thrones of the Godhead." Of all the great writers. 
he is one of the easiest we know of to read aloud. So perfect 
is the construction of his sentences, — so exquisitely articu- 
lated are all their vertebrae and joints, — so musical are his 
longest periods, even when they accomplish a cometary 
sweep ere he closes, that the most villainous elocutionist, 
in reading them, cannot help laying the emphases in the 
right place. 

And yet, with all these wondrous gifts as a writer, De 
Quincey has one glaring defect, which neutralizes in a great 
degree the force of his splendid genius, — frustrates all ade- 
quate success. Among the fairies who dropped gifts into his 
cradle, there was one whose gift was a curse. She gave him 
Irresolution, — the want of coordinating power, of central 
control, of intellectual volition. It is for this reason that 
De Quincey, with all his transcendent abilities and immense 



52 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

learning, has no commanding position in English literature, 
— exerts little influence on his age, — is the centre of no 
circle. Unhappily this weakness of will was still further 
aggravated by opium: and of the Opium-Eater he himself 
tells us, half sportively, but too truly, that it is a, character- 
istic never to finish anything. To these two causes may be 
ascribed the abiding deficiency of his writings, — the fact 
that, with all his genius and learning, he exerts less positive 
influence than many a man with a tithe of his ability. To 
foreigners he is hardly known. The one melancholy reflec- 
tion which his writings suggest is that they are all pro- 
vokingly fragmentary; he has produced not one complete 
and connected whole. As his power of conception is logical 
rather than creative, he analyzes wonderfully, but com- 
pounds imperfectly, — is a philosopher rather than a poet. 
Tantalus-like, he stands up to the chin in learning, but is 
unable, save by a desperate effort of the will, to lure it to 
the lip. Over his head hang golden fruits, but only the 
most convulsive, dexterous grasp rescues them from those 
gales of nervous distraction which would scatter them to 
the four winds. Hence his writings, with all their marvel- 
lous subtlety and exquisite beauty, are chaotic and indeter- 
minate, — tend to no fixed goal, — are as purposeless as 
dreams. They are reveries, outpourings, improvisations, — 
not works. He modulates and weaves together fragments 
of divinest song ; but gives us no symphony. Gleams come 
upon his page from deep central fires; lights flash across it 
from distant horizons; but the light is that of a dancing 
will-o'-the-wisp, not the steady throbbing of a star by 
which men may shape their course. As Carlyle says of 
John Stirling's conversation, DeQuincey's writings are 
" beautifullest sheet-lightning, not to be condensed into 



THOMAS DE QUINCE.Y. 53 

thunderbolts." Hence it is that he has charmed, delighted, 
astonished his age. but failed to impress it. 

De Quincey himself appears sensible of this vagrancy, 
this peripatetic instinct of his mind, and calls it an inter- 
mitting necessity, affecting his particular system like that 
of moulting in birds, or that of migration which affects 
swallows. " Nobody," says he, "is angry with swallows 
for vagabondizing periodically, and surely I have a better 
right to indulge therein than a swallow; I take precedency 
of a swallow in any company whatever." Who, after this 
naive and ingenious " confession and avoidance," can have 
the heart to complain? Prim folks, who cling to the 
dramatic unities, and all that, and who are shocked by a 
style that deviates from the reproachless routine of Hugh 
Blair, D.D., will, no doubt, continue to be scandalized by 
this dreamer. But those who have drunk inspiration 
from Richter and deep draughts of wisdom from Montaigne, 
will forgive De Quincey, too, his vagrancy, for the sake 
of its erratic pleasantness. As Menzel says of the German 
rambler: "We would willingly pardon every one his 
mannerism, if he were but a Jean Paul; and a fault of 
richness is always better than one of poverty," — so we 
may say of the English. Who would have thought to 
" pull up " Samuel Taylor Coleridge in one of his infinitely 
parenthetical monologues, because he diverged from the 
grand trunk line, and hurried you into insulated recesses 
and sequestered Edens unnoted in the way bill? No man, 
surely, but a grim utilitarian, reduced to the very lowest 
denomination. 

This very discursiveness and libertinism of intellect. — 
this tendency to wander from the main channel of his 
thought, — to steer toward every port but that set down 



54 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

in the bill of lading, — lent, it must be confessed, — an 
indescribable charm to De Quincey's conversation as it 
welled out from those capacious, overflowing cells of 
thought and memory, which a single word, or hint, or 
token could agitate. Gilfillan has finely described his 
small, thin, piercing voice, winding out so distinctly his 
subtleties of thought and feeling, — his long and strange 
sentences evolving like a piece of complicated music; and 
the Ettrick Shepherd, in the " Noctes," addresses him as one 
having the " voice of a nicht-wanderin' man, laigh and 
lone, pitched on the key o' a wimblin' burn speakin' to 
itsel' in the silence, aneath the moon and stars." A 
gentleman who visited De Quincey in 1854, thus records 
his impressions of him, after a. half hour's conversation: 
•■ We have listened to Sir William Hamilton at his own 
fireside, to Carlyle walking in the parks of London, to 
Lamartine in the midst of a favored few at his own house, 
to Cousin at the Sorbonne, and to many others: but never 
have we heard such sweet music of eloquent speech as 
then flowed from De Quincey's tongue. Strange light 
beamed from that grief- worn face, and for a little while 
that weak body, so long fed upon by pain, seemed to be 
clothed upon with supernatural youth." 

Eloquent as De Quincey was, his conversational powers 
were at their full height only when he was under the 
influence of his favorite drug. The best time to hear 
the lion roar was at four or five o'clock in the morning: 
then, when recovering from the stupor into which the opium 
had plunged him. his tongue seemed touched with an 
eloquence almost divine. It mattered little what was the 
theme of his high argument: whether beeves or butter- 
flies, St. Basil or iEsehylus; upon the grandest or the 



THOMAS DE QUINTET. 55 

most trivial, he would descant in the same lenem susur- 
rum, — never losing a certain mellow earnestness, yet 
never rising into declamation,^ in sentences exquisitely 
jointed, and with the enthusiasm of a mystic, the subtlety 
of a schoolman, and the diction of a poet. It is a curious 
fact that, though he was the soul of courtesy, he never 
for a moment thought of adapting his language to the 
understanding of his listener. The most illiterate porter. 
housemaid, or even prowling beggar, he would address on 
the most trivial themes, with as much pomp of rhetoric, 
in language as precise and measured, and abounding in 
as many "long-tailed words in osity and ation" — as that 
in which he would have addressed an Oxford professor on 
a vexed point in metaphysics, or Porson on a classical 
emendation. Mrs. Gordon, in her life of Professor Wilson, 
has given a specimen of the style in which the Opium- 
Eater was wont to address her father's housekeeper, 
when directing her how to prepare his food; and did it 
come from a less trustworthy source, we should take the 
order as a burlesque or caricature. Wishing his meat 
cut with the grain, he would say: "Owing to dyspepsia 
afflicting my system, and the possibility of any additional 
derangement of the stomach taking place, consequences 
incalculably distressing would arise, — so much so, indeed, 
as to increase nervous irritation, and prevent me from 
attending to matters of overwhelming importance, — if you 
do not remember to cut the mutton in a diagonal, rather 
than in a longitudinal form." No wonder that the cook, — 
a simple Scotchwoman, — stood aghast, exclaiming: " Weel, 
I never heard the like o' that in a 1 my days; the body 
has an awfV sicht o' words. If it had been my ain 
master that was wanting his dinner, he would ha 1 ordered 



56 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 

a hale table-fu' wi' little mair than a waff o' his haun, 
and here's a' this claver aboot a bit o' mutton nae bigger 
than a prin. Mr. De Quinshey would make a gran' 
preacher, — though I'm thinkin' a hantle o' the folks 
wouldna ken what he was drivin' at."* 

Doubtless the description of Praed's vicar, applied to 
De Quincey, would be no exaggeration : 

" His talk is like a stream which runs 

With rapid change from rocks to roses; 
It slips from politics to puns, 

It glides from Mahomet to Moses; 
Beginning with the laws which keep 

The planets in their radiant courses, 
And ending with some precept deep 

For skinning eels, or shoeing horses." 

In conclusion, we would urge those of our readers, 
especially our young readers, who are strangers to the 
Opium-Eater's twenty-four volumes, to read them at 
their earliest opportunity. If they would make the 
acquaintance of one of the greatest scholars and thinkers 
of our century, — of a piercing and imperial intellect, 
which, in all the great faculties of analysis, combination, 
and reception, has had few superiors in modern times, — 
of one of the subtlest yet most sympathetic critics our 
literature can boast, whether of art, nature, literature, or 
life, — of a writer who, in an age of scoffing and skepti- 
cism, has never sown the seeds of doubt in any human 
heart, — of a writer who, by the magnetism of his genius, 
the affluence of his knowledge, his logical acumen, his 
imaginative wealth, his marvellous word-painting, gives 
a charm to every theme he touches; — above all, if they 

* The account here given of De Quincey's conversation is necessarily a 
repetition, with some changes, of that given in the author's former hook, 
" The Great Conversers, and Other Essays." 



THOMAS DE qUIKVEY. 57 

would know the might and majesty, the pomp, the deli- 
cacy, and the beauty of our noble English tongue when 
its winged words are commanded by a master, — we would 
conjure them to study the writings of De Quince}^. 
Though he has left no great single work to which we 
can point as a monument of his genius, and his most 
precious ideas are in the condition of the Sibyl's leaves 
after they had been scattered by the wind, we may, 
nevertheless, say in the words of an English reviewer, 
"that the exquisite finish of his style, with the scholastic 
rigor of his logic, form a combination which centuries 
may never reproduce, but which every generation should 
study, as one of the marvels of English literature." 



ROBERT SOUTH. 



^VT"0 person who is wont to slake his intellectual thirst. 
-*^ at "the wells of English undefiled." will soon for- 
get the tingling delight, the exhilaration of mind and 
spirit, with which he first read the sermons of Robert 
South, the shrewdest, most caustic, most fiery, and, with 
the exception of Thomas Fuller, the wittiest of the old 
English divines. Among the giants of English theology 
he stands alone. Intellectually and morally, his individ- 
uality was strongly marked. To neither Hooker nor Bar- 
row, — to neither Taylor nor Tillotson, — nor, indeed, to 
any one of his great contemporaries, except in intellectual 
mi glit. can we compare him. Nature seems to have framed 
but one such, and then broken the mould. He was a 
kind of Tory Sydney Smith, yet lacking the genial, sunny 
disposition, and the humor, of that divine wit and witty 
divine; and in reading his works, it is difficult to say 
which is most to be admired, the thorough grasp and 
exhaustive treatment of the subject, the masterly arrange- 
ment of the thoughts, or the vitalitj^, energy and freshness 
of expression, which have given his sermons a higher place 
in the library of the scholar than even in that of the 
theologian or the pulpit orator. 

Robert South was the son of an eminent London mer- 
chant, and was born in 1633. In 1647 he was admitted 
a king's scholar at Westminster, under the tuition of the 



ROBERT SOUTH. 59 

celebrated Dr. Busb}^ and, while there, gave indications 
of that out-and-out Toryism for which he was conspicu- 
ous through life by praying for Charles I, by name, while 
reading the Latin prayers in school on the day of that 
monarch's execution. In 1651 he entered Christ Church. 
Oxford, at the same time with John Locke, — the future 
champion of the divine right of kings in company with 
the future champion of freedom. At college, he was a 
zealous student, indefatigable in his efforts to prepare 
himself for the gladiatorial contests in which he was to 
measure swords with some of the most adroit masters of 
theological fence of the time. He graduated in 1655. 
and only eight years after had so distinguished himself 
by his learning and eloquence, that he obtained the de- 
gree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1660 he was elected public 
orator to the University, and preached before the king's 
commissioners his celebrated discourse entitled " The Scribe 
Instructed, " the object of which is to show what are the 
qualifications of the Christian preacher, and the absurdity 
and wickedness involved in becoming a preacher of God's 
word without sufficient ability, knowledge and preparation. 
Though preached at the early age of twenty-seven, this 
sermon is one of his most original and vigorous produc- 
tions, and is characterized throughout by that logical 
arrangement, strength of thought, and freshness and epi- 
grammatic pungency of style, which distinguish all of his 
best discourses. The intensity of thought and feeling which 
burns through this discourse must have stamped South. 
in the minds of all who heard him. as a preacher of the 
highest ability, — as a spirit "of the greatest size, and the 
divinest mettle.' 1 

After speaking of the natural abilities of the preacher. 



60 ROBERT SOUTH. 

he proceeds to show the importance of perfecting them 
by study, exercise, and due improvement of the same. 
and says: "A well radicated habit, in a lively, vegete 
faculty, is like ' an apple of gold in a picture of silver. 1 
... It is not enough to have books, or for a man to 
have his divinity in his pocket, or upon the shelf; but 
he must have mastered his notions, till they even incor- 
porate into his mind, so as to be able to produce and 
wield them upon all occasions; and not, when a difficulty 
is proposed and a performance enjoined, to say that he 
will consult such and such authors: for this is not to be 
a divine, who is rather to be a walking library than a 
walking index. ... It is not the oil in the wick, but 
in the vessel, which must feed the lamp. The former may 
indeed cause a present blaze, but it is the latter which 
must give it a lasting light. It is not the spending money 
a man has in his pocket, but his hoards in the chest, or 
in the bank, which must make him rich. A dying man 
has his breath in his nostrils, but to have it in the lungs 
is that which must preserve life." Of quacks and moun- 
tebanks in divinity he proclaims himself the mortal foe, 
declaring that when Christ says that a scribe must be 
stocked with " things new and old," he does not mean 
" that he should have a hoard of old sermons, with a 
bundle of new opinions," and as for "such mushroom 
divines generally, who start up so of a sudden, we do 
not find their success so good as to recommend their 
practice. Hasty births are seldom long-lived, but never 
strong." He has a sharp thrust at a class of preachers 
not altogether extinct in our own day, who so pray that 
they "do not supplicate, but compliment Almighty God:" 
and he ridicules others who " lie grovelling on the ground 



ROBERT SOUTH. 61 

with a dead and contemptible flatness,"' passing off " dull- 
ness as a mark of regeneration." 

Passages of this sermon rise to a high pitch of eloquence, 
as where he dwells on the duty of the preacher to em- 
ploy significant speech and expression in enforcing the 
truths of the gospel. God's word he pronounces a sys- 
tem of the best rhetoric, as well as a body of religion; 
and Politian, who says that he abstained from reading the 
Scriptures, for fear they would spoil his style, is declared 
to be a blockhead as well as an atheist, who has " as little 
gust for the elegancies of expression as for the sacredness 
of the matter." As the highest things require the highest 
expressions, so, South says, we shall find nothing in Scrip- 
ture so sublime in itself, but it is reached and sometimes 
overtopped by the sublimity of the expression. The pas- 
sions, he asserts, have been more powerfully described by 
the Hebrew than by the heathen poets. " What poetry," 
he asks, " ever paralleled Solomon in his description of 
love, as to all the ways, effects, and ecstasies, and tyran- 
nies of that commanding passion? And where do we read 
such strange risings and fallings, now the faintings and 
languishings, now the terrors and astonishments of despair, 
venting themselves in such high amazing strains, as in 
Ps. lxxvii? Or where did we ever find sorrow flowing 
forth in such a natural prevailing pathos, as in the lam- 
entations of Jeremy? One would think that every let- 
ter was written with a tear, every word was the noise 
of a breaking heart: that the author was a man compacted 
of sorrows, disciplined to grief from his infancy, — one 
who never breathed but in sighs, nor spoke but in a 
groan." 

In his boyhood, South was an admirer of Oliver Crom- 



62 ROBERT SOUTH. 

well; but he early became an ardent partisan of the Res- 
toration, — " the very bulldog, "' one has termed him, " of 
the civil and ecclesiastical establishment." During the 
reign of William he rejected all offers of preferment; he 
was a great admirer of Archbishop Laud, and execrated 
the Toleration Act, being equally intolerant to indul- 
gences and forbearances, to Papist and Puritan. In 1663, 
he preached before Charles the Second, on the anniversary 
of the " murder " of Charles I, his famous sermon, " Pre- 
tence of Conscience no Excuse for Rebellion," — the fiercest 
and most truculent of his political discourses. The whole 
vocabulary of scorn is exhausted in this invective for terms 
in which to denounce the enemies of the late King, who 
was " causelessly rebelled against,' ' and " barbarously mur- 
dered by the worst of men and the most obliged of sub- 
jects. " This murder, which he pronounces the blackest 
fact which the sun ever saw since he hid his face upon 
the crucifixion of our Saviour, was perpetrated by the scum 
of the nation — that is, by what was then the uppermost 
and basest part of it. Like Actseon, Charles was torn by 
a pack of bloodhounds. The difference between being con- 
quered and slain by another king, and being killed by 
infamous rebels, is the difference between being torn by 
a lion, and being eat up by vermin. Ask the Puritans 
what made them murder their lawful sovereign, rob the 
church, perjure themselves, and extirpate the government, 
and the constant answer is conscience — conscience — "still 
this large capacious thing, their conscience, which is always 
of a much larger compass than their understanding." No 
terms are too scathing for Charles's enemies; Sir Harry 
Vane is contemptuously termed " that worthy knight who 
was executed on Tower Hill;" and Milton is "the Latin 



ROBERT SOUTH. 63 

advocate, who, like a blind adder, has spit so much venom 
on the Kino's person and cause."' 

We commend this sermon of South to those croakers 
who are always bewailing the degeneracy of our age, and 
the fierceness of its religious controversies: who sigh for 
the good old times when the champions of opposite doc- 
trines addressed each other in the dialect of doves, and 
disputed in bucolics. It is a common error to suppose 
that the controversies of the present day are carried on 
with a violence and bitterness unknown to past centuries, 
or, at least, to some golden age to which no date is fixed. 
The truth is, controversialists, like poets, have always been 
"an irritable race" ; and those who doubt the statement 
have only to look into the ponderous folios which the 
giants of old hurled at each other, when contending on 
the battle-fields of thought. To go no further back than 
Gregory Nazianzen, we find him, when pitted against the 
Emperor Julian, hurling the most acrid anathemas, and 
bestowing upon him epithets which "a beggar, in his 
drink, would not bestow upon his callet." Everybody 
knows with wTiat fury Martin Luther, the hero of Wit- 
tenberg and Worms, waged war upon his theological adver- 
saries. — how he showered down upon them an incessant 
flood of darts, pointed with cutting wrath, and feathered 
with scorn. Of the Catholic divines, he says: " The Papists 
are all asses, and always will remain asses. Put them in 
whatever sauce you choose, boiled, roasted, baked, fried, 
skinned, beat, hashed, they are always the same asses."* 
Again: " What a pleasing sight it would be to see the Pope 
and the Cardinals hanging on one gallows, in exact order, 
like the seals which dangle from the bulls of the Pope.' 1 
But even Luther must yield the palm for virulence, not 



64 ROBERT SOUTH. 

to say scurrility, to John Calvin. The latter's adversaries 
are always knaves, lunatics, drunkards, assassins; and some- 
times bulls, asses, cats and dog's. But of all the contro- 
versialists of ancient or modern times, it would be diffi- 
cult to name one who, with the same intellectual might, 
has descended to such low abuse as Milton. One who is 
conversant with the old bard through his exquisite poetry 
alone, — whose thoughts of him are identified with the 
gorgeous imagery of " Paradise Lost," and who thinks of 
him as wandering where the Muses haunt clear spring, 
or sunny grove, smit with the love of sacred song, — as 
the blind old man, equal in fate and renown with blind 
Thamyris and blind Maeonides, — feeding on thoughts that 
voluntary move harmonious numbers, as the wakeful bird 
sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, tunes her 
nocturnal note, — can hardly credit the fact that he is the 
same person who, in his prose writing, so out-Herods 
Herod in blackening and vilifying his opponents. Not 
content with riddling Salmasius with the " leaden rain 
and iron hail " of his logic, with tossing his giant adver- 
sary round the ring on the horns of his merciless dilem- 
mas, he writes him down a dunce, in capital letters, 
page after page. Again, at the ' end of the sublime 
prose hymn which concludes his work, " Of Reformation 
in England," he prays that certain of his adversaries, 
" after a shameful end in this life, (which God grant 
them,) shall be thrown down eternally into the darkest 
and deepest gulf of hell, where, under the despiteful con- 
trol, the trample and spurn, of all the other damned, 
that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other 
ease than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over 
them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that 



ROBERT SOUTH. 65 

jjlight forever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, 
most underfoot and downtrodden vassals of perdition." 
Neither South in his wildest excesses of invective, nor 
probably any later controversialist, has anything in his 
writing which approaches to the awful severity of this 
imprecation. 

Again, in the next century we find Rowland Hill calling- 
Charles Wesley " a designing wolf," a man " as unprin- 
cipled as a rook, and as silly as a jackdaw, 1 ' " a miscre- 
ant apostate, whose perfection consists in his perfect hatred 
of all goodness and of all good men." We find Toplady 
charging Wesley with " low serpentine cunning," " dirty 
subterfuges," and " mean, malicious impotence," which 
" degrade the man of parts into a lying sophister, and 
sink a divine into the level of an oyster-woman." " I 
would no more enter into a formal controversy with such 
a scribbler, than I would contend for the wall with a 
chimney-sweeper." Yet of these fierce controversialists 
two were authors of hymns which are sung oftener, per- 
haps, than any others in the language, — Toplady having 
written "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me"; and "Jesus, Lover 
of my Soul," being the production of Charles Wesley. 

To return from this digression: in 1662 South preached 
his sermon on " Man Created in the Image of God," which 
is unquestionably his masterpiece. In vigor and weight 
of thought, in comprehensive grasp of the theme, and in 
pregnant brevity of expression, it .has never been sur- 
passed by any production of the British pulpit. The 
subject of the discourse is the ideal man, whom South 
daguerreotypes as he supposes him to have been in 
Paradise. In doing this, he describes what he terms the 
universal rectitude of all the faculties of the soul, the 
3* 



66 EOBERT SOUTH. 

understanding, the will, the passions, and affections. Of 
the understanding he says that " it gave the soul a bright 
and full view into all things, and was not only a window, 
but was itself the prospect. Briefly, there is as much 
difference between the clear representations of the under- 
standing then, and the obscure discoveries that it makes 
now, as there is between the prospect of a casement and 
of a keyhole." Again, he says: "We may collect the 
excellency of the understanding then, by the glorious 
reminders of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the 
building by the magnificence of its ruins. Certainly, that 
must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which 
are so admirable. He that is comely when old and 
decrepid, surely was very beautiful when young. An 
Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens 
but the rudiments of paradise." Of the passion of Joy, 
he says that it was not that which now often usurps the 
name. " It was not the mere crackling of thorns, or 
sudden blaze of the spirits, the exultation of a tickled 
fancy, or a pleased appetite. Joy was then a masculine 
and a severe thing; the recreation of the judgment, the 
jubilee of reason. ... It did not run out in voice, or 
indecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the 
universe, silently and without noise. It was refreshing, 
but composed, like the pleasantness of youth tempered 
with the gravity of age, or the mirth of a festival managed 
with the silence of contemplation." 

Hardly inferior to the foregoing discourse is the sermon 
on " The Pleasantness of Wisdom's Ways," which has many 
of those pithy, epigrammatic sayings, in which all of 
South's writings abound. " When reason," he says, " by 
the assistance of grace, has prevailed over and outgrown 



ROBERT SOUTH. 67 

the encroachments of sense, the delights of sensuality are 
to such a one but as a hobby-horse would be to a coun- 
sellor of state, or as tasteless as a bundle of hay to a 
hungry lion." Of the fickleness and fleeting nature of 
popular applause, he says: "Like lightning, it only 
flashes upon the face, and is gone, and it is well if it 
does not hurt the man." The pleasure of the religious 
man, he declares, "is an easy and a portable pleasure, 
such a one as he carries about in his bosom, without 
alarming either the eye or the envy of the world. A 
man putting all his pleasures into this one, is like a 
traveller's putting all his goods into one jewel; the value 
is the same, and the convenience greater." The sermon 
closes with some characteristic sarcasms upon the auster- 
ities of the Romanists: "Pilgrimages, going barefoot, 
hair-shirts, and whips, with other' such gospel artillery, 
are their only helps to devotion. ... It seems that, 
with them, a man sometimes cannot be a penitent, unless 
he also turns vagabond, and foots it to Jerusalem, or 
wanders over this or that part of the world to visit the 
shrine of such or such a pretended saint; thus, that which 
was Cain's curse, is become their religion. " Of self- 
scourging he concludes that " if men's religion lies no 
deeper than their skin, it is possible that they may 
scourge themselves into very great improvements." 

In 1663 South was made Prebendary of St. Peter's, 
Westminster. In 1670 he was installed a canon of Christ 
Church, Oxford. In 1678 he preached a sermon on " Christ's 
Promise the Support of his Despised Ministers," which has 
some sharp thrusts at Jeremy Taylor. Recommending 
simplicity of speech, he says: "There is a certain majesty 
in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks 



68 ROBERT SOUTH. 

it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned 
periods, but commands in sober, natural expressions. A 
substantial beauty, as it comes out of the hands of 
nature, needs neither paint nor patch; things never made 
to adorn, but to cover something that would be hid.' 1 
He then cites Paul's mode of preaching, and says: 
*■ Nothing here of 'the fringes of the North Star;' 
nothing of 'nature's becoming unnatural;' nothing of the 
' down of angels' wings,' or ' the beautiful locks of cheru- 
bims;' no starched similitudes introduced with a 'Thus 
have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion,' and 
the like. No, these were sublimities above the rise of 
the apostolic spirit. For the Apostles, poor mortals, 
were content to take lower steps, and to tell the world 
in plain terms, that he who believed should be saved, 
and that he who believed not should be damned. And 
this was the dialect which pierced the conscience, and 
made the hearers cry out ' Men and brethren, what shall 
we do?' It tickled not the ear, but sunk into the 
heart." South's vehement and fiery spirit had but little 
taste for " the process of smoothness and delight " by 
which the Spenser of theology would have lured men 
into heaven. To his masculine understanding the diffuse, 
sensuous, and somewhat effeminate over- richness of 
Taylor's writings was particularly distasteful; and the 
conceits, quaint similes, unexpected analogies, and gaudy 
flowers of rhetoric, which he scattered in thick profusion 
throughout sermons on the grandest and most solemn 
themes, were as offensive and incongruous as would be 
the placing of the frippery fountains, and clipped yews, 
and trim parterres of Versailles among the glaciers and 
precipices of the Alps. 



ROBERT SOUTH. 69 

In 1681 South preached before the king at Westmin- 
ster his sermon on "All Contingencies Directed by God's 
Providence." In this occurs the famous hit at that "bank- 
rupt, beggarly fellow, Cromwell," who is represented as 
" first entering the Parliament House with a threadbare, 
torn cloak, and a greasy hat,, and perhaps neither of 
them paid for,"' — a gibe which so tickled Charles that he 
laughed heartily, and said to Rochester, "Odsfish! Lory, 
your chaplain must be a bishop; therefore, put me in 
mind of him at the next death." But South was no 
place-hunter; it was no sycophantic motive that prompted 
his sarcasm at the Protector, or led him to champion the 
king or the church. During the reigns of both Charles 
and James he steadily refused a bishopric. Though he 
disliked James's measures regarding the Catholics, his 
loyalty never wavered; and after the Prince of Orange 
ascended the throne, it was some time before he acknowl- 
edged the legality of the revolution settlement. When 
offered one of the sees vacated by the non-juring bishops, 
he declined, saying " he blessed God he was neither so 
ambitious, nor in want of preferment, as, for the sake 
of it, to build his rise upon the ruin of any one father 
of the church.' 1 

During the last years of his life he suffered from pain- 
ful and irritating ailments, yet they did not extinguish his 
sprightliness and vivacity, nor did his wit lose any of its 
keenness. In 1709 his infirmities were so great that the 
eyes of eager expectants were turned to him, in hopes of a 
speedy vacancy in his prebend's stall and rectory. There is 
a characteristic letter to Halifax from Swift, who coveted 
the place, and was impatient at South's tenacity of life, in 
which he writes: "Pray, my lord, desire Dr. South to die 



70 ROBERT SOUTH. 

about the fall of the leaf, for he has a prebend of West- 
minster, which will make me your neighbor; 1 ' to which 
Halifax replies, October 6, 1709, "Dr. South holds out still, 
but he cannot be immortal. 1 ' The infirm old man lingered, 
however, seven year's longer, outliving Halifax himself, and 
ended his laborious life on the 8th of July, 1716, at the age 
of eighty-three. 

The life and writings of South show that he was a man 
of powerful intellect, a worthy compeer of Hooker, Barrow, 
and Taylor, — in short, one of the giants of English the- 
ology. While liis writings have not the depth and sugges- 
tiveness of Hooker's, nor that mighty and sustained power 
controlled by the severest logic, that peculiar quality of 
mastery and vigor to which all tasks appear equally easy, 
which we find in Barrow, and while we miss in his page 
the imaginative fancies, the exquisite and subtle harmony 
which delight us in the sweet poet of theology, we find in 
South 's works a vigorous and sterling sense, a sharp and 
piercing wit, and a terseness, vitality, and freshness of 
expression which are surpassed in no other English dis- 
courses. To a large and acute understanding, he united a 
frank and courageous nature, and what he believed and felt 
he never feared to utter. Nice, squeamish persons, who 
dislike to hear ugly things called by ugly names, and prefer 
dainty, mincing terms, weighed in a hair-balance of pro- 
priety and good breeding, to the blunt and homely language 
in which honest indignation is wont to vent itself, will not 
relish his Spartan plainness of speech. They would have 
liked him better had he sought what an old poet calls 

"Modest, close-couched terms 
Cleanly to gird our looser libertines." 

But whatever other faults may be laid to his charge, he 



ROBERT SOUTH. 71 

was evidently no flincher, no trimmer; he was not "pigeon- 
livered, or lacking gall." Vice lie never feared to denounce, 
in high places or low, nor did he hesitate to declare the 
whole counsel of God to an unprincipled monarch and a 
dissolute court, whom his theories of political government 
led him to look up to with feelings of reverence. Tory as 
he was, there are passages in his sermons which must have 
made the cheeks of Charles and his sycophants tingle. A 
warm friend and an outspoken enemy, he had no reserves 
nor disguises, and always championed his principles a 
Voutrance. Wherever his sword fell, it always fell with 
the whole vigor of his arm, and he was satisfied with 
nothing less than cleaving his opponent from crown to 
chin. He never stopped to consider what expression would 
be most politic, or to hunt up dainty, holiday terms by 
which to characterize an opponent. No one can doubt that 
he would have fought, if necessary, with the same spirit 
that he wrote; and, indeed, during Monmouth's rebellion, 
he declared he was ready, if there should be occasion, to 
change his black gown for a buff coat. That he was a 
bigot in politics and religion, who could brook no dissent 
from his own rooted and ultra opinions, is too true; but 
this fault becomes almost a virtue when contrasted with 
the opposite vices of cringing servility, hypocrisy, and cant, 
which at the Restoration were almost universal. 

South's writings are a storehouse of vehement expres- 
sion, such as can be found in no other English writer. He 
had at his command the whole vocabulary of abuse, satire, 
and scorn, and, when his ire was aroused, he was never 
niggard of the treasures of his indignant rhetoric. Against 
everything, especially, which militated with the doctrines or 
ceremonies of the English church, he hurled his anathemas 



72 ROBERT SOUTH. 

and shot his sarcasms. Radical editors should study his 
writings day and night; nowhere else (except in Milton) 
will they find such biting words and stinging phrases with 
which to denounce wicked men, wicked institutions, and 
wicked practices. The intensity of thought and feeling 
which burns through his writings has hardly any parallel 
in English literature. It has been compared to the un- 
wearied fire of the epic poet. There are times when he 
seems to wrestle with his subject, as if he would grind it 
into powder ; and when he seems to say all that he does say 
to us, only that we may conjecture how much more he 
could say if he were able to wreak his thoughts upon 
expression. It has been truly said that many sentences in 
his works, appear torn from his brain by main strength, 
expressing not only the thought he intended to convey, but 
a kind of impatient rage that it did not come with less 
labor. With all his command of language, he seems often 
to struggle with it in order to wrest from it words enough 
for his wealth of thought. He wrote doubtless from his 
own consciousness when he represented study as racking 
the inward and destroying the outward man, — as clothing 
the soul with the spoils of the body, — and as that which, 
" like a stronger blast of lightning, not only melts the 
sword, but consumes the scabbard." 

His sermons on " Extempore Prayer," " Covetousness," 
" Education," " The Fatal Imposture and Force of Words," 
" Shamelessness in Sin," and " Prosperity ever Danger- 
ous to Virtue," are masterpieces of their kind, full of 
striking thoughts expressed with a never-flagging life, 
energy and splendor of language. It would be difficult to 
find in any other sermons so many aphorisms and maxims 
having a direct bearing on life and duty, — so many terse 



ROBERT SOUTH. 73 

sayings which are true, though not obvious, or moral 
reflections sharpened into epigrams. ".When Providence," 
he says, " designs strange and mighty changes, it gives men 
wings instead of legs; and instead of climbing leisurely, 
makes them fly at once to the top and height of greatness 
and power." Of ingratitude he says that it is " too base to 
return a kindness, and too proud to regard it; much like 
the tops of the mountains, barren indeed, but yet lofty; 
they produce nothing; they feed nobody; they clothe no- 
body; yet are high and stately, and look down upon all 
the world about them." 

Again, he speaks of the politician as " treating gratitude 
as a worse kind of witchcraft, which only serves to conjure 
up the pale, meagre ghosts of dead and forgotten kindnesses 
to haunt and trouble him." Of prayer he says: "Know 
that the lower thou fallest, the higher will thy prayer 
rebound." Again he observes: " God does not command us 
to set off our prayers with dress and artifice, to flourish it 
in trope and metaphor, and to beg our daily bread in blank 
verse, or to show anything of the poet in our devotions 
but indigence and want. . . . Does not he present his 
Maker not only with a more decent, but also more free and 
liberal oblation, who tenders Him much in little, and 
brings Him his whole heart and soul wrapped up in three 
or four words, than he who, with full mouth and loud 
lungs, sends up whole vollies of articulate breath to the 
throne of grace? No doubt God accounts and accepts of 
the former as infinitely a more valuable offering than the 
latter; as that subject pays his prince a much nobler and 
more acceptable tribute who tenders him a purse of gold 
than he who brings him a whole cart-load of farthings, — 
in which there is weight without worth, and number with- 
4 



74 ROBERT SOUTH. 

out account." Again he observes on the same subject: 
" It is not length, nor copiousness of language, that is 
devotion, any more than bulk and bigness is valor, or flesh 
the measure of the spirit. A short sentence may oftentimes 
be a large and a mighty prayer. Devotion so managed is 
like water in a well, where you have fullness in a little 
compass; which surely is much nobler than the same car- 
ried out into many little petit, creeping rivulets, with 
length and shallowness together.' ' 

South's style is more modern than that of any other 
divine of his century. It is fervid, forcible, and flexible, 
often rhythmic, never obscure; and readily adapts itself 
to all the demands of his thought. 

William Cobbett, who. we fear, did not " reck his own 
rede," says: "A man, as he writes on a sheet of paper 
a word or a sentence, ought to bear in mind that he is 
writing something which may, for good or evil, live for- 
ever. "' How much more momentous is the same thought 
as expressed by South, — "He who has published an ill 
book must know that his guilt and his life determine not 
together; no, such an one, as the Apostle saith, 'Being 
dead, yet speaketh 1 ; he sins in his very grave, corrupts 
others while he is rotting himself, and has a growing 
account in the other world after he has paid Nature's 
last debt in this; and, in a word, quits this life like a 
man carried off by the plague, who. though he dies him- 
self, does execution upon others by a surviving infliction." 

Speaking of the dependence of the intellectual man 
upon the physical, he observes that while the soul is a 
sojourner in the body, " it must be content to submit its 
own quickness and spirituality to the dullness of its 
vehicle, and to comply with the pace of its inferior 



ROBEKT SOUTH. 75 

companion, — just like a man shut up in a coach, who, 
while he is so, must be willing to go no faster than the 
motion of the coach will carry him." In denouncing 
intemperance, he pithily says: "He who makes his belly 
his business, will quickly come to have a conscience of as 
large a swallow as his throat." In a sermon on educa- 
tion, he satirizes some schoolmasters as executioners rather 
than instructors of youth, and says that " stripes and 
blows are fit only to be used on those who carry their 
brains in their backs." Pride he declares to have been 
" the devil's sin and the devil's ruin, and has been, ever 
since, the devil's stratagem; who, like an expert wrestler, 
usually gives a man a lift before he gives him a throw." 
Of misrepresentation he forcibly says: "It is this which 
revives and imitates that inhuman barbarity of the old 
heathen persecutors, wrapping up Christians in the skins 
of wild beasts, that so they might be worried and torn 
in pieces by dogs. Do but paint an angel black, and that 
is enough to make him pass for a devil." To be angry 
under the dispensations of Providence he pronounces the 
height of folly, as well as wickedness. "A man so behav- 
ing himself is nothing else but weakness and nakedness 
setting itself in battle array against Omnipotence; a 
handful of dust and ashes sending a challenge to the host 
of heaven. For what else are words and talk against 
thunderbolts; and the weak, empty noise of a querulous 
rage against him who can speak worlds, who could word 
heaven and earth out of nothing, and can, when he 
pleases, word them into nothing again?" One of his 
most vivid and striking images, conveyed with a Mil- 
tonian roll and grandeur of expression, illustrates the 
seeming strength which a revengeful spirit acquires from 



76 ROBEKT SOUTH. 

resistance. "As a storm could not be so hurtful, were it 
not for the opposition of trees and houses, it ruins no- 
where but where it is withstood and repelled. It has, 
indeed, the same force when it passes over the rush or 
the yielding osier; but it does not roar or become dread- 
ful till it grapples with the oak, and rattles upon the 
tops of the cedars." Denouncing ignorance in public 
men, he says: "A blind man sitting in the chimney corner 
is pardonable enough, but sitting at the helm, he is 
intolerable. If owls will not be hooted at, let them keep 
close within the tree, and not perch upon the upper 
boughs." These pithy and pointed sayings are not rare 
and occasional gems that gleam on us at long intervals 
in South's writings, and reward us only after we have 
sifted heaps of verbiage, but sparkle on every page, — we 
had almost said in every paragraph. 

South had a keen insight of human nature. He had 
thoroughly anatomized the human heart, and laid bare 
its complex web of motives; and hence there is no 
" pleasant vice," no self-gratulating hypocrisy, no evasion 
of duty under a complacent admission of its claims, no 
self-cheating delusion, no sham sentiment, that hides its 
true character from his searching glance. He " strips 
vice and folly of their frippery, scatters the delusions of 
pride and passion, and lays down the rule of Christian 
faith and practice with a precision which satisfies the 
intellect, while it leaves the transgressor without an 
excuse." 

South never juggles nor coquets with words; he has 
no verbal prudery ; and hence ■ he excels in expressive 
coarsenesses of language, or felicities of vulgar allusion: 
as when he speaks of " that numerous litter of strange, 



ROBEET SOUTH. 77 

senseless, absurd opinions, that crawl about the world, to 
the disgrace of reason"; or says of the pleasures of the 
eating man and the thinking man, that they are " as 
different as the silence of Archimedes in the study of a 
problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash. 1 ' Again, 
wishing to show that pleasure is merely a relative term, 
that what is such to one being may be pain to another, 
he says: "The pleasures of an angel can never be the 
pleasures of a hog. 1 ' Provided he can make his meaning 
clear, he never troubles himself about the niceties, ele- 
gancies, and refinements of expression; and his strongest 
terms are often what an old dramatist calls " plain, naked 
words, stript of their shirts." 

It is by their wit that the sermons of South are 
chiefly known, and against no class of persons is it more 
frequently or more mercilessly directed than against the 
Puritans, whose " heavenly hummings and hawings," as 
well as their " blessed breathings,' 1 he never tires of 
ridiculing. Regarding the Church of England royalists 
as " the best Christians and the most meritorious subjects 
in the world," it is not strange that he delighted to 
satirize the sectarians with whom the country was over- 
run, — the preachers of the tub and the barn, — who 
denied the divine right of kings, declared that men should 
" be able to make a pulpit before they preached in it," 
and held, as he believed, all human learning in contempt. 
Gifted with a razor-like wit, and exquisitely sensitive to 
the comic and the grotesque, he dwelt with delight on 
their meagre, mortified faces, their droning and snuf- 
fling whine, their sanctimonious look and demeanor; and 
with a proud consciousness of superior bearing, and a 
somewhat pharisaical conceit of superior integrity — with 



78 ROBERT SOUTH. 

the keenest sarcasm and the most undisguised contempt, 
— held up to the scorn of mankind those whom he deemed 
impudent pretenders to the gifts of the Spirit. That in 
his perpetual gibing at rebels and schismatics, he some- 
times trembles on the verge of buffoonery, — that his wit 
and humor, even on more sacred themes, often border on 
grossness and indelicacy, — cannot be denied. South knew 
the truth of Horace's maxim: 

"Ridiculo acri 
Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secatis." 

But just as he begins to disgust us by his coarseness, he 
almost invariably recovers himself by some stroke of vig- 
orous sense and language; and his excuse is to be found 
in the fact that he lived in an age of sinners whose rhi- 
noceros skin of impudence was not penetrable by smooth 
circumlocutions, and whose vices required the scourge and 
the hot iron. 

A few specimens of South's wit are all that we shall 
have space to give. Of Popery and Puritanism, which in 
his opinion were one, he says: " They were as truly brothers 
as Romulus and Remus. They sucked their principles from 
the same wolf." Sometimes he despatches the Puritans 
with the short dagger of a single phrase, as where he 
terms them "those seraphic pretenders," or speaks of 
" this apocalyptic ignoramus." Of the greatness and lustre 
of the Romish clergy, he says: "We envy them neither 
their scarlet gowns, nor their scarlet sins." In allusion 
to the many persons who in his time rushed into the 
ministry without serving an apprenticeship, he observes 
that " matters have been brought to this pass, that if a 
man amongst his sons had any blind or disfigured, he 
laid him aside for the ministry; and such a one was pres- 



ROBERT SOUTH. 79 

ently approved, as having a mortified countenance.'''' Of 
the perversity of the Israelites, he observes that " God 
seems to have espoused them to Himself upon the very 
same account that Socrates espoused Xantippe, only for 
her extreme ill conditions, as the fittest argument both 
to exercise and to declare His admirable patience to the 
world." Speaking of the paradoxes maintained by the 
Greek sophists, he declares: " Such a stupidity or wanton- 
ness had seized upon the most raised wits, that it might 
be doubted whether the philosophers or the owls of Athens 
were the quicker sighted.*' Ridiculing the idolatry of 
the Egyptians, he asks: "Is it not strange that a rational 
man should worship an ox, nay, the image of an ox? 
fawn upon his dog? bow himself before a cat? adore leeks 
and garlic, and shed penitential tears at the smell of a 
deified onion? Yet so did the Egyptians, once the famed 
masters of all arts and learning." Again, quoting Isaiah 
xliv, 14, "A man hews him down a tree in the wood, 
and a part of it he burns." and in verses 16, 17, " with 
the residue thereof he maketh a god," South thus com- 
ments: "With the one part he furnishes his chimney, 
with the other his chapel. A strange thing, that the fire 
must first consume this part, and then burn incense to 
that. As if there was more divinity in one end of the 
stick, than in the other; or as if it could be graved and 
painted omnipotent, or the nails and the hammer could 
give it an apotheosis." Of sensualists, he says: "Saying 
grace is no part of their meal; they feed and grovel 
like swine under an oak, filling themselves with the mast, 
but never so much as looking up, either to the boughs 
that bore, or the hands that shook it down." 

Henry Ward Beecher declares that in his younger 



80 KOBERT SOUTH. 

days he was a great reader of the old sermonizers. " I 
read old Robert South through and through. I saturated 
myself with South. I formed much of my style, and of 
my handling of texts on his methods.'" Let the rising 
generation of preachers follow this example, and if there 
is not less complaint of the lack of freshness, force, and 
energy in the pulpit, we are sure the complaint will 
cease to be well founded. 



CHARLES H. SPURGEOK 



" "YXT^"^ ^ as no ^ seen -Naples, nas seen nothing,' 1 say 
* ▼ the Italians; who has not heard Mr. Spurgeon, 
has not heard the greatest of living preachers, will say 
hundreds, not only of Englishmen, but of Americans, who 
have listened to the burning words of a Beecher, a Liddon, 
a Punshon, or a Hall. To visit London without seeing the 
Metropolitan Tabernacle and its preacher, would be like 
visiting Rome without seeing St. Peter's, or making the 
tour of America without beholding Niagara. For this 
reason and a mixture of others, we left our hotel on a fine 
Sabbath morning, — the 6th of August, 1871, — and, mount- 
ing an omnibus bound for " The Elephant and Castle," 
were soon on the Surrey side of the Thames, and presently 
at our point of destination. The Tabernacle, so noted 
among churches, we found to be a plain, but massive 
church of brick, adorned with Corinthian pillars, standing 
back from the street, and inclosed with an iron fence. 
Although the gate to the inclosure was not yet open, a 
crowd of persons had already collected, half an hour before 
the service began, waiting impatiently for admission. 
Upon stating that we were an American, a ticket of admis- 
sion was at once handed to us, and we entered the building- 
just as it was beginning to fill. Glancing around, we were 
struck with the resemblance of the vast audience- room to 
that of a large theatre. At the farther end is a stage-like 
platform, with a moveable table on castors and a few chairs; 



82 CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 

and just below it, five or six feet above the main floor, there 
is an orchestra-like inclosure, filled with a large number of 
bright-looking and neatly-dressed boys. Running round 
the church are three galleries, one above another, — the 
whole forming one of the best arrangements for seeing and 
hearing that could be contrived. Seating ourselves in the 
lower gallery, at just the right distance from the speaker, 
we had an excellent opportunity both to see and listen. 
The regular congregation having been seated, the doors 
were thrown open to the crowd, when a mighty tide of 
human beings surged into the aisles, filling every standing- 
place, sitting-place, nook and corner of the building, till it 
seemed impossible for another man or child to squeeze him- 
self in. Never have we seen an audience more densely 
packed, — not even when Jenny Lind sang the first night at 
Tremont Temple in Boston, of the rapt attention of the 
dense throng on which occasion this strongly reminded us. 
Even in the uppermost gallery, which is a good way 
toward heaven, many persons were standing for lack of 
seats. 

The house filled, Mr. Spurgeon at once steps from a 
back door upon the platform, followed by the elders of the 
church, who sit just behind him. In his physiognomy 
and general appearance, there is little to give assurance of 
a great orator. Short, stout, and muscular, with a some- 
what square face, small, sparkling eyes, a well-formed nose, 
a mouth shaded by a black moustache, and a general air of 
frankness, straightforwardness, and honesty, he is a good 
type of the Anglo-Saxon, and no one could possibly mistake 
him for a native of any other country. Natural, decided. 
and impressive in his manner, full of force and fire, and 
speaking in a loud, bell-like voice, at once clear in its 



CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 83 

articulations and pleasant in its tones, he rivets your atten- 
tion at the start, though precisely what is the secret of his 
hold upon you, you are puzzled to tell. He ' begins the 
service with prayer; and a prayer it is, a real outpouring 
of the heart to God, not an oration before the Almighty, or 
an eloquent soliloquy. He is evidently not one of those 
preachers who, as South says, " so pray that they do not 
supplicate, but compliment Almighty God 1 '; he believes, 
with the same divine, that it is not necessary to beg our 
bread in blank verse, or to show anything of the poet in 
our devotions but indigence and want. After the prayer 
comes the hymn, read in a clear, impressive voice; and 
without any accompaniment, either of organ or bass-viol, 
the vast assembly of six thousand or seven thousand sound 
forth the notes of praise. After the first verse has been 
sung, Mr. Spurgeon singing with his people, a second verse 
is read and sung, then another verse, till the entire hymn 
is gone through with. Before worshipping at the Taber- 
nacle, we had heard the fine music at the royal chapel at 
Whitehall, and listened with ravished ears to the echoing 
strains of the trained and gowned singers in St. Paul's, and 
to the pealing organ as it swelled the note of praise in 
" the long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults" of Westminster 
Abbey; but we were more deeply moved by this simple 
praise, — this grand, though inartistic song of joy, — welling 
up from these Christian hearts, than by the most gorgeous 
music that ever in minster or cathedral had essayed to 

"Dissolve us into ecstasies, 
And bring all Heaven before our eyes." 

A lesson from the Scriptures is next read, accompanied 
with a pithy and suggestive running commentary, and the 
people throughout the house open their Bibles, and follow 



84 CHARLES H. SPURGEOtf. 

the pastor in the reading. Another hymn is given out and 
sung as before; and then comes the sermon. Though fifty 
or sixty minutes long, it is listened to throughout with the 
profoundest interest, no one, not even of the listeners who 
are standing, showing any signs of weariness. The text is 
1 Corinthians vi, 19, 20: "Ye are not your own; for ye 
are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your 
body, and in your spirit, which are God's." The subject is 
considered under three heads: I, The blessed fact, "Ye are 
bought with a price 1 '; II, The plain consequence arising 
from this fact, namely, that, 1, It is clear as a negative, that 
"Ye are not your own 1 '; and, 2, It is clear as a positive, 
that " your body and spirit are God's." Ill, The natural 
conclusion, " Therefore glorify God in your body and in 
your spirit." 

Under the second head the speaker observes: "It is a 
great privilege not to be one's own. A vessel is drifting 
on the Atlantic hither and thither, and its end no man 
knoweth. It is derelict, deserted by all its crew; it is the 
property of no man; it is the prey of every storm, and the 
sport of every wind; rocks, quicksands, and shoals wait to 
destroy it; the ocean yearns to engulf it. It drifts onward 
to no man's land, and no man will mourn its shipwreck. 
But mark well yonder bark of the Thames, which its owner 
surveys with pleasure. In its attempt to reach the sea it 
may run ashore, or come into collision with other vessels, 
or in a thousand ways suffer damage ; but there is no fear, 
it will pass through the floating forest of 'the Pool'; it will 
thread the winding channel, and reach the Nore, because 
the owner will secure it pilotage, skillful and apt. How 
thankful you and I should be that we are not derelict 
to-day! "We are not our own, not left on the wild waste 



CHARLES H. SPLTRGEON. 85 

of chance to be tossed to and fro by fortuitous circum- 
stances, but there is a hand upon the helm; we have on 
board a pilot who owns us, and will surely steer us into the 
Fair Havens of eternal rest." Under the third head, Mr. 
Spurgeon says: " Our bodies used to work hard enough for 
the devil; now they belong to God, we will make them 
work for Him. Your legs used to carry you to the theatre; 
be not too lazy to come out on a Thursday night to the 
house of God. Your eyes have often been open on iniquity ; 
keep them open during the sermon, do not drop asleep! 
Your ears have been sharp enough to catch the words of a 
lascivious song; let them be quick to observe the word 
of God. Those hands have often squandered your earnings 
in sinfulness ; let them give freely to the cause of Christ. 
Your body was a willing horse when it was in the service 
of the devil ; let it not be a sluggish hack now that it draws 
the chariot of Christ." 

Again: " If you were to go to a cattle-show, and it were 
said, ; Such and such a bullock belongs to Her Majesty,' it 
may be that it is no better than another, but it would be 
of interest to thousands as belonging to royalty. See here, 
then, such and such a man belongs to God; what manner 
of person ought he to be? If there be any one in this 
world who will not be criticised, depend upon it, Christian, 
it is not the Christian; sharp eyes will be upon him, and 
worldly men will find faults in him which they would not 
see if he were not a professor. For my part, I am very 
glad of the lynx eyes of the worldlings. Let them watch, 
if they will. I have heard of one who was a great caviller 
at Christian people, and after having annoyed a church a 
long time, he was about to leave, and, therefore, as a part- 
ing jest with the minister, he said, ' I have no doubt you 



86 CHARLES H. SPURGEON". 

will be very glad to know that I am going a hundred miles 
away ! ' ' No,' said the pastor, ' I shall be sorry to lose 
you.' 'How? I never did you any good. 1 ' I don't know 
that, for I am sure that never one of my flock put half a 
foot through the hedge but what you began to yelp at him, 
and so you have been a famous sheep-dog for me.' I am 
glad the world observes us. It has a right to do so. If a 
man says 'I am God's,' he sets himself up for public 
observation. Ye are lights in the world, and what are 
lights intended for but to be looked at? A city set on a 
hill cannot be hid."' 

These passages, torn from the context, give but a 
faint idea of the sermon as a whole, which was a mas- 
terpiece of its kind, and in many respects peculiar and 
original. After service, we had a pleasant interview with 
the preacher, whom we found lying on a sofa in a back 
room, quite exhausted by his effort. He had but just 
recovered from a severe sickness, this being his second 
sermon since he left his bed. It is well known that his 
exhausting labors and burning enthusiasm have begun to 
tell upon his physical constitution. The sword has proved 
too sharp for even the stout scabbard. Ten years ago 
preaching was almost as easy to him as singing to a 
bird. To electrify, convince, and persuade audiences was 
a labor of love. Now every Sunday's efforts cost him 
forty- eight hours' pain. During our interview a gentle- 
man said to him that an American preacher who had 
heard the sermon observed at its close, "That discourse 
was composed in this house." "Did he say so?" exclaimed 
Mr. Spurgeon. " That is remarkable. The text was given 
to me by one of my deacons, who died yesterday, and 
requested in his last moments that I would preach from 



CHARLES H. SPURGEON". 87 

it. At six this morning I sat down to think out the 
discourse. I spent an hour upon the text, and could 
make nothing of it. I never could preach from other 
people's texts. I said this, in my despair, to my wife, 
who told me to try again. I tried again with the same 
result. ' Well,' said Mrs. S., ' go into the pulpit, and 
the sermon will come to you. 1 I followed the advice, 
and you know the result." In this case Mr. Spurgeon 
must have spent more time than usual in preparation, 
for it is said that he commonly devotes but a half hour 
to this purpose. Only the heads of the sermon are put 
on paper; all the rest is left to the pulpit. "If I had 
a month given me to prepare a sermon, 1 ' he once said 
to a visitor, " I would spend thirty days and twenty- 
three hours in something else, and in the last hour I 
would make the sermon.' 1 When asked by the same per- 
son if he had ever written a discourse, he replied, " I 
would rather be hanged.' 1 

Yet if Mr. S. spends but little time in immediate 
preparation, he spends a vast deal of time in general 
preparation, for the pulpit. No preacher has drunk deeper, 
draughts from the old English divines, or saturated his 
mind more thoroughly with the spirit of God's word. 
By these means he has become " a Leyden jar, charged 
to a plenum, 11 in Horace Mann's phrase, and, the moment 
he comes in contact with his people, gives forth the elec- 
tric fire. In our conversation with him, we observed 
that we would not call the sermon eloquent; it was 
something far better than eloquence. " Oh, no, 11 was the 
reply, " I have no pretension to that sort of thing. I 
love to hear eloquent men, you know, as well as any- 
body, but if / should attempt oratory, I should be sure 



88 CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 

to fail." In the same spirit he lately prefaced a lecture 
by saying that he had never yet succeeded in the art of 
lecturing, and added, " If any of you have ever seen a goose 
trying to fly, you may say, 'That's like Mr. Spurgeon 
trying to lecture.' " It is reported that a noted fanatic 
and bore once called to see him, and, being asked by a 
deacon what name he should announce to Mr. S., re- 
plied, " Say that a servant of the Lord wants to see 
him." " Tell him, 11 was the preacher's reply, " that I 
am engaged with his Master. 11 Being asked whether this 
anecdote was apocryphal, he smilingly admitted its truth. 
Mr. Spurgeon has a good deal of mother wit, and even 
when preaching drops from time to time a shrewd, pun- 
gent remark, or indulges in an apt, vivid pictorial illus- 
tration, that causes the sea of upturned faces to ripple 
with a smile. In a recent speech in Surrey, at the lay- 
ing of the foundation stone of a new chapel, he said no 
money was to be placed in the cavity of the stone, for 
he could not see the use of burying money, and, more- 
over, he had known memorial stones to move suddenly 
during the night when money had been placed in them. 
He once heard a man say, " If you want to touch my 
purse, you must touch my heart, 11 to which he (Mr. S.) 
replied, " I believe you, because there is where you keep 
your heart. 11 Another man once said to him: "I thought 
you preached for souls, and not for money 11 ; and he re- 
plied: "So we do, but we can't live upon souls, and if 
we could, it would take a large number such as yours 
to make a single breakfast." At a recent laying" of the 
corner-stone of a chapel, he told the people how he con- 
trived to secure pure air in a church where the windows 
were so rarely opened that it was found difficult to raise 



CHARLES H. SPURGEON. . 89 

them. " It was so close and hot," he said, " that I asked 
every gentleman near a window to smash a pane or two. 
There was soon a very grand smash, but then the beau- 
tiful fresh air streamed in. I paid the bill afterwards 
like an honest man; but it was much better to do that 
than bear the cruelty of preaching in such an atmos- 
phere, or forcing people to listen when they were . more 
disposed to sleep." 

What is the secret of Mr. Spurgeon's power as a 
preacher? That he is the greatest of living European 
preachers, if not the first in the world, few will doubt. 
For twenty years men have gathered in crowds to hear 
him. Audiences varying from 5,000 to 9,000 have con- 
stantly filled the houses where he has preached; men of 
all classes have hung upon his lips; and yet, though the 
" fiery soul has o'erinformed " the physical frame, and he 
speaks almost always with some pain, there is no flagging, no 
symptom of abatement in the eagerness with which men 
listen. You must still go early to secure a seat in the 
Tabernacle. His church numbers some 4,300 members. 
He has published over a thousand sermons. More than 
twenty millions of his discourses have been circulated in 
the English language, and they have been translated into 
all the languages of Christendom, besides being translated 
to some extent into remote heathen tongues. There was 
a time when it was fashionable to speak of him. as "vul- 
gar, 1 ' and as being a cometary genius, whose splendor 
would be short-lived. But now even fashionable people 
feel compelled to hear him, and scholars, barristers, mem- 
bers of parliament, and peers of the realm acknowledge 
his power. How shall we account for this? Is there 
anything in his person to solve the mystery? There 
4* 



90 CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 

have been orators who almost by the magnetism of their 
presence have held their hearers spell-bound. Their lofty 
and commanding forms, their god-like foreheads, flashing 
eyes, and general port and bearing, have given weight 
and electric force to their words. Such was the case 
with Whitefield,- Irving, Chalmers, and other great pulpit 
orators, who impressed men by their looks as well as by 
their utterances. But Spurgeon has nothing of this sort 
to magnetize men or chain their attention. There is no 
necromancy in his face or figure. Short and chubby in 
figure, with a round, homely, honest face, though with 
an expressive eye, he is Saxon intus et in cute; and though 
you might credit him with strength of will and iron en- 
durance, you would not from his features infer great 
intellectual power or ability to sway the hearts of men. 
Is it his culture that gives Mr. Spurgeon his sway 
over men? Unquestionably he has done much to remedy 
his lack of intellectual equipment since he began to 
storm the hearts of his hearers. He has drunk deep, ox- 
like draughts from the Scriptures and from the old 
Puritan divines. He has spent not a little time, we 
have been told, in the study of Greek and Latin, and 
has enriched his vocabulary with words drawn from the 
pure "wells of English undefiled." He has made incur- 
sions, too, into the broad domains of science, not merely 
for recreation, or to gratify his intellectual curiosity, but 
for the more definite purpose of supplying his mind with 
new images and analogies. According to a statement in 
the London " World," he has not only given attention to 
astronomy, chemistry, zoology, ornithology, etc., but field- 
sports, also, have helped to enrich his fund of illustration. 
It is not uncommon, we are told, to find him engaged 



CHARLES H. SPURGEOX. 91 

busily over a pile of technical books on fox-hunting or 
salmon-fishing, deer-stalking or grouse-shooting. He is a 
strong believer in the theory of ventilating the mind,— v 
of pouring a stream of new ideas constantly through it, 
— to preserve its freshness, and prevent the stagnation 
not unfrequently brought about in a strong intellect 
engrossed in one pursuit. All this explains the fresh and 
breezy vigor of his preaching, and shows why, in his 
thousands of sermons, he so rarely repeats himself. But, 
it must be remembered, he did not begin his career with 
the advantage of a liberal education. It is doubtful, too, 
whether, in early life, he had either the taste, the appli- 
ances, or the leisure for the scientific and literary excur- 
sions he now makes. He is not a scholar, nor a trained 
theologian, still less one of those bookish men in whom 
the receptive faculty absorbs the generative, and the 
scholarhood sucks up the manhood; nor is there reason 
to suppose that, by any amount of application, he could 
become 

"A second Thomas, or at once, 
To name them all, another Duns." 

Does Mr. Spurgeon's voice account for his success? 
That the quality of the voice has much to do with suc- 
cess in oratory, none can doubt. Cicero held that, " for 
the effectiveness and glory of delivery, the voice, doubt- 
less, holds the first place." There are voices that electrify, 
voices that melt, and voices that appal. It is said that 
Chatham's lowest whisper was distinctly audible; his 
middle tone was sweet, rich, and beautifully varied; and 
when he raised his voice to its high pitch, the house was 
completely filled with the volume of sound, and the effect 
was awful, except when he wished to cheer and animate, 



92 OHAKLES H. SPURGEON. 

and then he had a spirit-stirring note which was perfectly 
irresistible. Henry Clay's voice had a similar flexibility. 
Soaring with the grand and descending with the pathetic, 
it had a marvellous compass, and its trumpet blasts were 
not more audible or thrilling than its veriest whisper. 
Burke's voice, on the other hand, was a loud cry, which 
tended, even more than the formality of his discourses, 
to send the M. P.'s to their dinners. Mr. Spurgeon's 
voice, marvellous as it is, has little flexibility or compass. 
It has a loud, bell-like ring, but is a comparatively level 
voice, with little variety in its modulations, though very 
pleasing in its tones. Rarely rising to a trumpet tone, 
it never descends to the lowest notes, and, above all other 
qualities, it is remarkable for distinctness and force. 
Were his voice, however, ten times more impressive than 
it is, and as " musical as Apollo's lute," it would not alone 
account for his success, for it might be vox et preterea 
nihil, which surely would soon lose its charm. 

The real sources of Mr. Spurgeon's power we believe 
to be his elocution, his style, and the earnestness that grows 
out of a profound conviction of the truth of what he 
teaches. His delivery, though not of the very highest 
order, is wonderfully natural and impressive. There is 
no stiffness or affectation in it. He talks, in a free, off- 
hand way, just as a man would talk with his friend. 
Even when most impassioned, he speaks in colloquial 
tones, never for a moment falling into what the old 
Scotch woman, rebuking her son as he read the news- 
paper, called " the Bible twang." Again, his language is 
as simple and unaffected as his manner. It is chiefly 
plain, nervous, idiomatic Saxon; the vocabulary, not of 
books, but of the market-place and the fireside, — " not of 



CHARLES H. SPURGEON". 93 

the university, but of the universe.' 1 "The devil," he 
once said, " does not care for .your dialectics, and eclectic 
homiletics, or Germanic objectives and subjectives; but 
pelt him with Anglo-Saxon in the name of God, and he 
will shift his quarters.'" Mr. Spurgeon's style, like that 
of every great speaker, is individual and original, — the 
outgrowth and exponent of his whole mental character. 
It is plain, straightforward, luminously transparent, — a 
perfect mirror of the thought. His winged words have a 
force and significance which they do not bear in the 
dictionary, and hasten to their mark with the precision, 
rapidity, and directness of an arrow. No shade of doubt 
weakens the dogmatic decisiveness of the idea; no 
momentary hesitation checks or turns aside the sure and 
sweeping current of the expression. He has no meaning- 
less expletives to pad out his sentences; but everywhere 
the mind of the speaker is felt beating and burning 
beneath his language, stamping every word with the 
image of a thought. 

Besides these peculiarities of Mr. Spurgeon's style, it 
is remarkable also for its pictorial power. Few pulpit- 
orators abound more in illustrations, — especially homely, 
yet vivid, illustrations drawn from the fireside, the street, 
the market, the scenes of daily life. Piety with him is 
not a thing of abstraction, but something visible, in con- 
crete form. " If I am a Christian," he said, in the ser- 
mon we heard, " I have no right to be idle. I saw the 
other day men using picks in the road in laying down 
new gas-pipes; they had been resting, and, just as I passed, 
the clock struck one, and the foreman gave a signal. I 
think he said, ' Blow up; ' and straightway each man took 
his pick or his shovel, and they were all at it in earnest. 



94 CHARLES H. SPURGEON". 

Close to them stood a fellow with a pipe in his mouth, 
who did not join in the work, but stood in a free and 
easy posture. It did not make any difference to him 
whether it was one o'clock or six. Why not? Because 
he was his own; the other men were the master's for 
the time being. If any of you idle professors can really 
prove that you belong to yourselves, I have nothing more 
to say to you; but if you profess to have a share in the 
redeeming sacrifice of Christ, I am ashamed of you if you 
do not go to work the very moment the signal is given." 
Again, take the following: "The world has a right to 
expect more from the Christian than from anybody else. 
Stand in fancy in one of the fights of the old civil war. 
The Royalists are fighting desperately and are winning 
apace, but I hear a cry from the other side that Crom- 
well's Ironsides are coming. Now we shall see some fight- 
ing. Oliver and his men are lions. But lo! I see that 
the fellows who come up hang fire, and are afraid to 
rush into the thick of the fight; surely, these are not 
Cromwell's Ironsides, and yonder Captain is not old Noll? 
I do not believe it; it cannot be. Why, if they were what 
they profess to be, they would have broken the ranks of 
those perfumed cavaliers long ago, and made them fly 
before them like chaff before the wind. So when I hear 
men say, 'Here is a body of Christians.' What! Those 
Christians? Those cowardly people who hardly dare speak 
a word for Jesus! Those covetous people, who give a 
few cheese-parings to His cause! Those inconsistent peo- 
ple whom you would not know to be Christian professors 
if they did not label themselves! What! such beings fol- 
lowers of a crucified Saviour?" 

Lastly, men love to hear Mr. Spurgeon, because, as 



CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 95 

Sheridan said of Rowland Hill, " his ideas come red-hot 
from the heart." 1 " Wesley once said to his brother Charles, 
who was drawing him away from a mob, in which some 
coarse women were vituperating in eloquent billingsgate, 
" Stop, Charles, and learn how to preach.' 1 The earnest- 
ness, courage, and passion which made these fishwomen 
eloquent in a petty squabble, Wesley thought, if trans- 
ferred to the pulpit, could not fail powerfully to move 
the hearts of the people. Mr. Spurgeon is not a sensa- 
tional preacher, nor a maker of fine phrases, a lettered 
and polished orator. He is unlike as possible those 
clerical icicles with whom the artistic air kills every- 
thing, and whose greatest fault is that they are absolutely 
faultless. He is no less unlike those clerical Jehus who 
take delight in sweeping with their chariot-wheels to the 
very edge of some precipice of heresy, so as to call forth 
a shriek from startled orthodox nerves. He has no half 
beliefs, no sickly sentimentalism, no mental reservations, 
but a direct, intense, Bunyan-like apprehension of the Gos- 
pel of Christ, and he preaches it fully and fervidly, as God 
has given him ability, to mankind. Believing in the 
truths of revelation with his whole soul, — tormented 
with none of those lurking doubts, that semi- skepticism 
which so often paralyzes the pulpit in our day, — reject- 
ing utterly what he regards as a Christless Christianity, 
from which the supernatural element has been eliminated, 
— he urges those truths home upon his hearers with the 
whole force of his nature. Supremely indifferent to the 
modern philosophic statements, the literary refinements 
of doctrine, — regarding with utter scorn the nice, hair- 
splitting discriminations between what we may know of 
a doctrine and what we may not, that leave us in the 



96 CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 

end with hardly anything to know about it, — he proclaims, 
Sabbath after Sabbath, without abatement, mincing, or 
softening, those grand old truths, as he regards them, 
which Calvin, and Augustine, and Paul proclaimed before 
him. And what has been the result? As he himself 
once said to a lady who observed that the secret of his 
success was Christ, and Christ only, he is " constantly 
striking on the old piece of iron, and it is no wonder 
that it sometimes gets hot." 1 While those timid preachers 
of the modern school, who 

"Would not in a peremptory tone 
Assert the nose on their face their own," 

and who know just how much truth it is prudent to 
dole out, are left to utter their nicely-turned periods to 
empty pews, this Puritanic preacher, who comes from 
what John Foster calls " the morass of Anabaptism,' 1 is 
listened to with such delight, that even from a church 
that, holds six or seven thousand souls, hundreds go 
away, Sabbath after Sabbath, unable to find a standing- 
place. He is a living refutation of the statement, so often 
and so confidently made, that the preacher of our day 
who stays in what are called "the old ruts"' of theology. 
and who takes no stock in the modern " progressive ideas,*' 
has lost his hold upon the people; and proves, beyond 
all gainsaying, that, even in this age of Darwins and 
Huxley s and Mills, the most popular pulpit orator is not 
he who panders to their love of excitement, novelty, or 
rhetoric, but he who thunders forth with ceaseless itera- 
tion those grand old truisms, which, even in this day of 
new theologies, are still the best things left upon the 
earth. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 



TN the year 1836 the writer entered the Law School at 
-*- Cambridge, and saw for the first time Judge Story, 
whose pupil he was for some two years to be. Earely 
has the physiognomy of a distinguished man, whose looks 
we had previously pictured to ourself, contrasted so strik- 
ingly as in this instance with our ideal. Instead of a 
man " severe and stern to view," with an awe-inspiring 
countenance in every hue and lineament of which justice 
was legibly written, and whose whole demeanor mani- 
fested a fearful amount of stiffness, starch, and dignity, — 
in short, an incarnation of law, bristling all over with 
technicalities and subtleties, — a walking Coke upon Little- 
ton, — we saw before us a sunny, smiling face which 
bespoke a heart full of kindness, and listened to a voice 
whose musical tones imparted interest to everything it 
communicated, whether dry subtleties of the law, or 
reminiscences of the " giants of those days " when he was 
a practitioner at the bar, and of which he was so eloquent 
a panegyrist. 

Further acquaintance deepened our first impressions; 
we found that he was the counsellor, guide, philosopher, 
and friend of all his pupils; that, without the slightest 
forfeiture of self-respect, he could chat, jest, and laugh 
with all; and that if he never looked the Supreme Court 
judge, or assumed the airs of a Sir Oracle, it was simply 



98 KECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STOKY. 

because he had a real dignity, an inward greatness of 
soul, which rendered it needless that he should protect 
himself from intrusion by any chevaux-de-frise of for- 
malities, — still less by the frizzled, artificial locks, black 
robes, and portentous seals of a British judge, who, with- 
out the insignia of his office, would almost despise himself. 
Overflowing as the Judge was with legal lore, which 
bubbled up as from a perennial fountain, he made no 
display of learning; in this matter, as in the other, he 
never led one to suspect the absence of the reality by 
his over-preciseness and niceness about the shadow. His 
pupil did not pass many hours in his presence before he 
learned, too, that the same fertile mind that could 
illumine the depths of constitutional law, and solve the 
knottiest and most puzzling problems of commercial 
jurisprudence, could also enliven the monotony of recita- 
tion by a keen witticism or a sparkling pun. Though 
thirty years and more have elapsed since the time of 
which we speak, we can yet see him in fancy as plainly as 
we see his portrait hanging before us. It is two o'clock 
p.m.; he walks briskly into the recitation-room, his face 
wreathed with smiles, and, laying down his white hat, 
takes his seat at the table, puts on his spectacles, and 
with a semi-quizzical look inquires, as he glances about 
the room: 

"Where do I begin to-day? Ah! Mr. L , I believe 

you dodged out yesterday just before I reached you: so 
we'll begin with you." 

This sally provokes a laugh in which the Judge joins 
as heartily as the students ; and then begins perhaps an 
examination in " Long on Sales," a brief treatise, which 
suggests the remark that " Long is short, and short 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 99 

because he is Long; a writer who can condense into a 
small book what others would spin out into volumes. " 

Probably no two teachers of equal ability were ever 
associated, who were more unlike in the constitution of 
their minds, and who conducted a recitation in modes 
more dissimilar, than Judge Story and Professor Green- 
leaf. The latter, the beau ideal of a lawyer in his 
physique, was severe and searching in the class-room, 
probing the student to the quick, accepting no half- 
answers, or vague, general statements for accurate 
replies, showing no mercy to laziness; and when he com- 
mented on the text, it was always in the fewest and 
pithiest words that would convey the ideas. Language 
in his mouth seemed to have proclaimed a sumptuary 
law, forbidding that it should in any case overstep the 
limits of the thought. Indolent students, who had 
skimmed over the lesson, dreaded his scrutiny, for they 
knew that an examination by him was a literal iveighing 
of their knowledge — that they could impose on him by 
no shams. Judge Story's forte, on the other hand,, was 
in lecturing, not in questioning; in communicating infor- 
mation, not in ascertaining the exact sum of the pupil's 
knowledge. In most cases his questions were put in such 
a way as to ' suggest the answer: for example, having 
stated two modes of legal proceeding under certain 
circumstances, he would ask the student — "Would you 
adopt the former course, or would you rather adopt the 
latter?" "I would rather adopt the latter," the student 
would reply, who perhaps had not looked at the lesson. 
"You are right," would be the comment of the kind- 
hearted Dane Professor; "Lord Mansfield himself could 
not have answered more correctly." Whether he was 



100 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 

too good-natured to put the student on the rack, or 
thought the time might be more profitably spent, we 
know not; but no one feared to recite because he was 
utterly ignorant of the lesson. 

The manner of the Judge, when lecturing, was that 
of an enthusiast rather than that of a professional 
teacher. The recitation, — if recitation it could be called, 
where the professor was questioned on many days nearly 
as often as the student, — was not confined to the text- 
book; but everything that could throw light upon the 
subject in hand, — all the limitations or modifications of 
the principles laid down by the author, — were fully 
stated, and illustrated by numerous apt examples. The 
book was merely the starting-point, whence excursions 
were made into all the cognate provinces of the law from 
which the opima spolia of a keen and searching intellect 
and a capacious memory could be gathered. His readi- 
'ness of invention, as his son has remarked in the biography 
of his father, was particularly exhibited in the facility 
and exhaustless ingenuity with which he supplied ficti- 
tious cases to illustrate a principle, and shaped the 
circumstances so as to expose and make prominent the 
various exceptions to which it was subject. Often his 
illustrations were drawn from incidents of the day, and 
the listless student whose ears had been pricked up by 
some amusing tale or anecdote, found that all this was 
but the gilding of the pill, and that he had been cheated 
into swallowing a large dose of legal wisdom. Thus "he 
attracted the mind along instead of driving it. Alive 
himself, he made the law alive. His lectures were not 
bundles of dried fagots, but of budding scions. Like the 
Chinese juggler, he planted the seed, and made it grow 
before the eyes of his pupils into a tree." 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 101 

Few men have ever been less subject to moods. He 
had no fits of enthusiasm. Of those alternations of mental 
sunshine and gloom, — of buoyancy and depression, — to 
which most men, and especially men of genius, are sub- 
ject, he seemed to know nothing. Nor did he, even 
when most overwhelmed with work, manifest any sense 
of weariness. After having tried a tedious and intricate 
case in the United States Court Room in Boston, he was 
as fresh, elastic, and vivacious in the recitation room as 
if he had taken a mountain walk or some other bracing 
exercise. He had that rare gift, the faculty of com- 
municating, and loved, above all things else, to com- 
municate knowledge. The one ruling passion of his 
mind was what a French writer calls " un gout dominant 
d'instruire et documenter qvwlqu'unP Few men with 
equal stores of learning have had a more perfect com- 
mand of their acquisitions. All his knowledge, whether 
gathered from musty black-letter folios or from modern 
octavos, was at the tip of his tongue. He had no 
unsmelted gold or bullion, but kept his intellectual riches 
in the form of current coin, as negotiable as it was 
valuable. His extraordinary fluency, his vast acquire- 
ment, his sympathy with the young, and especially his 
personal magnetism, eminently fitted him to be a teacher. 
To smooth the pathway of the legal learner, to give him 
a clue by which to thread the labyrinths of jurispru- 
dence, to hold a torch by which to light his way through 
its dark passages, — above all, to kindle in his breast 
some of his own ever-burning enthusiasm, — was to the 
Judge a constant joy. We doubt if ever a dull hour 
was known in his lecture-room. His perennial liveliness; 
his frankness and abandon; his " winning smile, that 



102 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 

played lambent as heat-lightning around his varying 
countenance"; his bubbling humor; his contagious, merry, 
and irresistible laugh; his exhaustless fund of incident 
and anecdote, with which he never failed to give piqu- 
ancy and zest to the driest and most crabbed themes, — 
all won not only the attention, but the love, of his 
pupils, and he who could have yawned amid such stimu- 
lants to attention, must have been dull indeed. Only a 
dunce or a beatified intelligence could listen uninterested 
to such a teacher. 

So prodigal was he of his intellectual riches, so lavish 
of his learning, wit, and anecdote, that the fear of every 
new-comer was, that he would exhaust himself; but the 
apprehension was soon allayed; the stream never ceased, 
but went pouring on its sparkling waters with undimin- 
ished volume, till the hearer felt that he was in the 
condition described by Robert Hall when speaking during 
his lunacy of the conversation of Mackintosh, — " It seemed 
like the Euphrates pouring into a teacup." Of all the 
themes which Judge Story loved to discuss, the constitutional 
history of the country was the favorite. When lecturing 
upon this subject, on which he never was weary of 
expatiating, and all the smallest details as well as the 
grand facts of which were at the tip of his tongue, his 
enthusiasm and eloquence were at the height. Especially 
fond was he at such times of describing the great men 
of other days, — the Marshalls, Pinkneys, Dexters, Martins, 
and other giants of the law,' — whom he had known and 
associated with; and of holding up their characters, their 
Herculean industry, their integrity, and other virtues, as 
models to be imitated. With breathless interest we 
listened as he spoke of the principles of the Constitution. 



RECOLLECTION'S OF JUDGE STORY. 108 

— the views of the great men by whom it was drawn, — 
of the dangers to which the country was exposed, — of 
the anxiety with which the experiment of a republican 
government was watched across the sea, — and closed with 
an exhortation to us to labor for the promotion of justice, 
to liberalize and expand the law, to scorn all trickery 
and chicanery in its practice, and to deem no victory 
worth winning if won by the arts of the trickster and 
the pettifogger. 

Few of the old graduates of Dane Law School will 
forget the scene that occurred on his return from the 
winter session of the Supreme Court at Washington. The 
announcement of his return was sure to fill the lecture- 
room, and he was welcomed with all the joyousness, and 
with the hearty grasp of the hand, with which a loving 
father is welcomed home by his children. How eagerly 
we gathered around him, and plied him with questions 
concerning the great cases that had been argued at Wash- 
ington, and with what kindling enthusiasm would he 
describe to us the keen contests between the athletes of 
the bar, as one would have described to a company of 
squires and pages, — to use the illustration of one of his 
pupils, R. H. Dana, — a tournament of monarchs and 
nobles on a field of cloth of gold; how Webster spoke in 
this case, Legare, or Clay, or Crittenden, or Choate, in that, 
and all " the currents of the heady fight." In vain, at 
any such times as we have described, did the clock peal or 
the bell clang the hour of adjournment. On the lecturer 
went, oblivious of the lapse of time, pouring forth a con- 
tinuous and sparkling stream of anecdote and reminiscence, 
or throwing " a light as from a painted window " upon the 
dark passages of constitutional history, and charming the 



104 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 

dullest listener by his eloquence, till the bell for evening 
prayers announced that now he must cease, and his hearers 
departed, hoping that he would resume the broken thread 
of his discourse to-morrow. Some of these anecdotes and 
reminiscences, as we heard them from his lips, with a few 
others published just after his death in a Boston journal, 
will make up the rest of this paper. 

Judge Story was an intimate friend and warm admirer 
of William Pinkney, whom, in spite of his dandyisms 
and affectations, he regarded as one of the ablest and 
most scholarly lawyers in the country. Mr. Pinkney, said 
he, dressed always with fastidious elegance, and looked as 
if he had just come from his dressing-room, and was 
going to a fashionable party. His coat, of the finest blue, 
was nicely brushad; his boots shone with the highest 
polish; his waistcoat, of immaculate whiteness, glittered 
with gold buttons; he carried in his hand a light cane, 
with which he played; and his whole appearance was that 
of a man of fashion rather than that of a profound and 
laborious lawyer. He was exceedingly ambitious, fond of 
admiration, and never spoke without an eye to effect. He 
would spend weeks of hard labor upon a case, and, when 
it was called up for trial, would beg earnestly to have it 
postponed on the ground that he had had no time for 
preparation; and when informed by the Court that it 
could not be deferred longer, would rise and astonish 
everybody by a profound and elaborate argument, which 
he wished to be regarded as an impromptu burst of genius. 
Another trick of his was to quote from a law-book a 
passage which he had just previously read and got by 
heart for the very occasion, and pretending he had not 
seen it for a long time, but had no doubt of its tenor, to 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 105 

cite it in support of the doctrine he had maintained. 
The counsel on the other side would perhaps deny the 
correctness of the citation, when Mr. Pinkney would call for 
the book, and, to the surprise of everybody, would read 
from it the exact words he had quoted, without the change 
of a syllable. In spite of these affectations, however, he 
was a brilliant and powerful lawyer, a fine scholar, and 
a man of vast resources; and if in the contests of the 
forum he did not stand confessed as facile princeps, — the 
victor of every contest, — yet he was admitted by all who 
witnessed his displays to be surpassed by none of the 
athletes with whom he was wont to wrestle in the legal 
arena. Nothing could be more logical or luminous than 
his reasoning; his very statement of a case was itself an 
argument. 

Among the giants of the bar with whom Mr. Pinkney 
was accustomed to grapple, continued the Judge, was the 
Irish exile, Thomas Addis Emmet. " I shall never forget 
the first case in which these two men were pitted against 
each other, and tested each other's mettle. It was a case 
of prize law, and Mr. Pinkney, being perfect master of that 
branch of the law, in which his antagonist was but slightly 
versed, and having the advantage moreover of being at 
home in the arena to which Mr. Emmet was a stranger, 
gained an easy victory, and not content with that, was 
somewhat haughty and overbearing in his manner, as he 
was too apt to be when he lacked a foeman worthy of his 
steel. Stung by this contemptuous treatment, Mr. Emmet 
determined to supply his own defects, and, for the next 
three or four months, devoted himself almost exclusively to 
the study of that department of the law in which he had 
been unable to cope with the great Marylander. At the 



106 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 

end of that time he was employed as counsel in opposition 
to Mr. Pinkney, in the famous case of the ' Nereide, 1 on 
the decision of which depended the ownership of a large 
and very valuable cargo. The speech of Mr. Emmet on this 
occasion was a masterpiece of argument, learning, and 
eloquence, and placed him by universal consent in the very 
front rank of American lawyers. In his eloquent exordium 
he spoke of the embarrassment of his situation, the novelty 
of the forum, and the deep interest which the public took 
in the cause. He spoke in glowing terms of the genius and 
accomplishments of his opponent, whose fame had extended 
beyond the Atlantic; and then, in language the most deli- 
cate and touching, he alluded to the contrast presented by 
his own life to this brilliant career, — to the circumstances 
which had exiled him from his country, — and to the treat- 
ment he had received from Mr. Pinkney at the previous 
trial. All this was said with an air so modest and in terms 
so full of pathos, that his audience, including the veteran 
attorneys and gray-headed judges of the Supreme Court, 
were moved to tears. He then proceeded to his argument, 
which exhibited a profound knowledge and a firm grasp of 
the law applicable to the case, and by its powerful logic 
excited the admiration of both bar and court. Upon his 
sitting down, Mr. Pinkney at once arose and prefaced his 
argument, — which, I need not say, was worthy of his 
abilities and fame, — with an apology for his former unkind 
treatment of Mr. Emmet, couched in the most elegant and 
polished language, surpassing even the latter in pathos, and 
breathing sentiments so noble and magnanimous, that again 
the entire assembly, — lawyers, court, and spectators, — were 
moved to tears, which this time fell more plenteously ' than 
from Arabian trees their medicinal gums. 1 When the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 107 

Court adjourned, I asked the author of this masterly 
and eloquent speech if he would not write out the sub- 
stance of it, so far as he could recall it, — for of course I 
could not expect him to give me the exact words of an 
exordium thus extemporized, — and let me have a copy. 
' Come with me to dinner,' was the reply, ' and we'll talk 
about the matter.' I dined with him, and after we had 
risen from the table, he drew from a drawer a large roll of 
manuscript, elegantly written,- — for he wrote a beautiful 
hand, — and containing his entire speech word for word as 
he had delivered it, not only the argument, but the 
impromptu exordium which had so charmed and affected 
all who heard it! The truth was, that, with the divining 
instinct of genius, he had guessed correctly at the course 
which his adversary would pursue, and carefully prepared 
himself accordingly." 

The case was decided adversely to Mr. Pinkney's client, 
Judge Story dissenting from the opinion of the other mem- 
bers of the Court. Scarcely, however, had the decision 
been made, when intelligence came across the Atlantic that 
Lord Stowell, the head of the Admiralty Court of England, 
one of the highest authorities in maritime law, had, in a 
case involving precisely the same principles of prize law as 
that of the " Nereid'e," made a decision directly the opposite 
to that of the United States Supreme Court. With the men- 
tion of this fact, so gratifying to his pride of opinion, Judge 
Story triumphantly closed his narration. 

At another time Judge Story told the following anecdote 
of Samuel Dexter, Fisher Ames, and Chief Justice Marshall. 
" Mr. Dexter was a remarkable man, — a man whom, to use 
Burke's language, if you should meet and talk with him a 
few minutes on a rainy day under a shed, you would at 



108 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 

once pronounce a great man. The first time I met him I 
knew not who he was, and stared in wonderment. Yet his 
was rather a brilliant mind than a truly great one. Mr. 
Dexter was once in company with Fisher Ames and Chief 
Justice Marshall, when the latter began a conversation, or 
rather a monologue, which lasted some three hours. On 
their way homeward, Ames and Dexter vied with each other 
in extolling the learning and mental grasp of their host. 
After a brief walk, Ames said : ' To tell the truth, Dexter, 
I have not understood a word of his argument for half an 
hour.' ' And I,' as frankly responded Dexter, ' have been 
out of my depth for an hour and a half. 1 " 

Judge Story was an ardent admirer of Albert Gallatin, 
whom he ranked as the peer of Alexander Hamilton. Both 
of these gentlemen, he observed, were foreigners, and they 
landed on our shores about the same time. " When, as 
Secretary of the Treasury under Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Gallatin 
succeeded to Mr. Hamilton, he made no changes, though the 
latter belonged to the opposing party. Unlike the Italian 
on whose tombstone was inscribed the significant epitaph, 
' I was well, I wished to be better, and I am here,' he did 
not try to improve upon that which was good. When Mr. 
Gallatin was a member of Congress, he said to me one day: 
'We have plenty of eloquence upon the floor, — aye, and 
too much! It is the hard-working committee-man who is 
needed; the man who rarely speaks, but who can apply 
himself to hard, dry, yet important statistical labor. 
Figures of this kind are far weightier and more useful 
than figures of speech.' If this was true in the days 
of Mr. Gallatin, what is the fact now?" 

The haste and recklessness with which laws are made 
and repealed in this country, was a frequent topic of the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 109 

Judge's denunciation. He once asked an eminent gentle- 
man from Tennessee why the legislature of that State did 
not meet annually, as did the legislatures of other States. 
The reply was, " that the laws might have at least a trial 
before they were repealed," — a sarcasm not more pointed 
than just. 

Judge Story accounted for the provision in the United 
States Constitution requiring that a person be thirty-five 
years of age to render him eligible to the office of Senator, 
by the fact that the framers of. that instrument were very 
distrustful of young men. " He is not yet fifty years old," 
was an argument which annihilated a canvasser's preten- 
sions. " Some of the ablest statesmen, however, that the 
world has seen, were young men; for example, Fox, and 
Pitt, who at twenty-three was by far the ablest man in 
Parliament. I am aware that I go counter to the judgment 
of many when I pronounce William Pitt an incomparably 
greater man than his father, Lord Chatham, a man who 
was often strangely inconsistent. You all remember his 
eloquent* denunciation of the lord who recommended the 
employment of the Indians against the Americans in the 
war of the Revolution; and yet the man from whose lips 
fell this burst of indignation filed in the British Cabinet a 
letter in his own handwriting advising the very measure 
which, when urged by another, he characterizes as in- 
famous ! " 

Judge Story was a profound admirer of Chief Justice 
Marshall, and could rarely hear his name mentioned with- 
out digressing to panegyrize his learning and intellectual 
power. " Marshall's favorite expression, said he, was ' It is 
admitted.' So resistless was his logic, that it was a com- 
mon remark of the bar, that if you once admitted his 



110 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 

premises, it was all over with you. You were forced to his 
conclusions; and the only safety, therefore, was in denying 
■ everything he asserted. Daniel Webster once said to me, — 
' When Judge Marshall says, It is admitted, sir, I am 
preparing for a bomb to burst over my head, and demolish 
all my points. 1 " 

" Some years ago," remarked the Judge, " I saw a book 
advertised, entitled ' New Views of the Constitution. 1 I 
was startled. What right has a man to announce new 
views upon this subject? Speculations upon our govern- 
ment are dangerous, and should be frowned upon. That 
great statesman, Edmund Burke, has wisely and senten- 
tiously said, — ' Governments are practical things, not toys 
for speculists to play with. 1 And yet governments must 
often change, to meet the demands of the times. I have 
been in public life nearly forty years, and have seen great 
changes in the country. Men may flatter themselves that 
now, at least, all is settled; but no! our laws are written 
upon the sands of time, and the winds of popular opinion 
gradually efface them; new layers are to be made, and 
your old writing renewed or changed." 

The following statement was made by the Judge to 
illustrate the extreme difficulty of framing statutes so as 
to avoid all ambiguity in their language. Being once 
employed by Congress to draft an important law, he spent 
six months in trying to perfect its phraseology, so that its 
sense would be clear beyond the shadow of a doubt, and not 
the smallest loophole could be found for a lawyer to creep 
through. And yet, in less than a year afterward, after 
having heard the arguments of two able attorneys, he was 
utterly unable, in a suit which came before him as a 
Judge of the Supreme Court, to decide upon the statute's 
meaning. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. Ill 

Being asked one day whether John Tyler was President 
or Acting President of the United States at the demise of 
President Harrison, Judge Story replied: "A nice question, 
gentlemen, and hard to solve. The question was debated 
in Cabinet meeting; but, on Mr. Webster's opinion, Mr. 
Tyler was addressed as President. On one occasion, when 
Chief Justice Taney, of the Supreme Court, was ill, I took 
his place as Chief Justice, and was thus addressed. At 
first I felt nervous; but soon becoming used to it, I found 
it, like public money to new members of Congress, ' not bad 
to take.' And this was probably the feeling of Mr. Tyler." 

Judge Story was fond of telling that Mr. Webster, on 
one or two occasions, after grumbling at a legal decision 
of the former, had afterwards the magnanimity to ac- 
knowledge that he was wrong. We are sure that when the 
Judge himself was in error, he was frank, on discovering 
it, to avow the fact. One day in the Moot Court, a 
student, arguing a case before him, said: "My next authori- 
ty will be one which your Honor will not be disposed to 
question, — a decision by Mr. Justice Story, of the United 
States Supreme Court." "I beg your pardon," said the 
Judge, bowing; "but that opinion by Mr. Justice Story 
is not law." 

It was well observed by Charles Sumner, in his eulogy 
on Judge Story, that any just estimate of the man and 
his works must have regard to his three different char- 
acters, — as a judge, as an author, and as a teacher. 
When we look at his books only, we are astonished at 
his colossal industry: it seems almost incredible that a 
single mind, in a single life, should have been able to 
accomplish so much. His written judgments on his own 
circuit, and his various commentaries, occupy twenty-seven 



112 RECOLLECTIONS OE JUDGE STORY. 

volumes, and his judgments in the Supreme Court of the 
United States form an important part of thirty- four 
volumes. Kightly does Mr. Sumner characterize him as 
the Lope de Vega, or the Walter Scott, of the Common 
Law. With far more truth might it be said of him 
than was said by Dryden of one of the greatest British 
lawyers : 

"Our law that did a boundless ocean seem, 
Was coasted all and fathomed all by him." 

Besides all his legal labors, he delivered many discourses 
on literary and scientific subjects, wrote many biographi- 
cal sketches of his contemporaries, elaborate reviews for 
the " North American," drew up learned memorials to 
Congress, made long speeches in the Massachusetts Legis- 
lature, contributed largely to the " Encyclopaedia Ameri- 
cana," prepared Reports on Codification, etc., and drafted 
some of the most important Acts of Congress. The secret 
of these vast achievements was ceaseless, methodical in- 
dustry, frequent change of labor, and concentration of 
mind. He economized odd moments, bits and fragments 
of time, never overworked, and, when he worked, con- 
centrated upon the subject all the powers of his intellect. 
Add to this, that his knowledge did not lie in undigested 
heaps in his mind, but was thoroughly assimilated, so as 
to become a part of his mental constitution. His brain 
was a vast repository of legal facts and principles, each 
one of which had its cell or pigeon-hole, from which it 
was always forthcoming the instant it was wanted. 

No other American lawyer or jurist has so wide-spread 
a European fame. His legal works, republished in Eng- 
land, are recognized as of the highest authority in all 
the courts of that country; and his "Conflict of Laws," 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 113 

— embodying the essence of all similar works, as well 
as the fruits of his own deep thinking, — a work of 
enormous labor, upon a most intricate and perplexing- 
theme, — has been translated into many European lan- 
guages, and is cited as the most exhaustive discussion 
of the subject. Yet, — such is fame, — this man whose 
name had crossed the Atlantic, and was on the lips of 
the profoundest jurists of the Old World, had com- 
paratively little reputation in his lifetime among his 
own countrymen. Men immeasurably inferior to him, 
intellectually and morally, overshadowed him in the pub- 
lic mind. And yet no man was more susceptible to 
merited praise than he. While he despised flattery, and 
could detect the least taint of it with the' quickness of 
an instinct, his heart was yet as fresh and tender as a 
child's, and he felt neglect as "Ee"e~nly as the bud the 
frost. Not soon shall we forget the good humor, mingled 
with a sensibility that could not be concealed, with which 
he told the following story of himself, illustrating the 
saying that " a prophet is not without honor, save in his 
own country": 

"One day I was called suddenly to Boston, to attend 
to some business matters, and on my way thither I dis- . 
covered that I had forgotten my pocket-book. It was too 
late to return, and so when the omnibus halted at the 
Port (Cambridgeport, half-way between Old Cambridge, 
the Judge's residence, and Boston,) I ran hastily into the 
neighboring bank, and asked to be accommodated with a 
hundred dollars. The cashier stared at me as if he 
thought me insane; but I noticed that he particularly 
scrutinized my feet; and then he coldly informed me 
that he had not the pleasure of recognizing me. I imme- 



114 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 

diately told him my name, supposing that it might have 
reached, at least, the limits of my. own place of residence. 
He still kept his eyes upon my feet, and finally, as I 
was about to leave, more chagrined than disappointed, 
he requested me to step back, adding that he would be 
pleased to accommodate me. Upon my inquiring the 
reason of his delay, he replied : ' Sir, I have never heard 
your name before, but I know you must be a gentleman 
from the looks of your boots." 1 " The unction and perfect 
good humor with which the Judge told this anecdote, 
and the joyous laugh with which he concluded it, — aside 
from the absurdity that such a man should be judged of 
by his material understanding, — were irresistible. We 
need not add, that his pupils laughed, as Falstaff says, 
"without intervellums," — till their faces were "like a 
wet cloak ill laid up." 

We have spoken of Judge Story's wit. Like Cicero, 
Burke, Erskine, and many other great lawyers, he loved 
a keen witticism, and did not consider it beneath his 
dignity to perpetrate a telling pun. Once at a Phi Beta 
Kappa dinner, Edward Everett, then Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, gave as a toast: "The legal profession: however 
high its other members may climb, they can never rise 
higher than one Story.''' The shouts of applause which 
greeted this sally were redoubled when Judge Story jumped 
up and responded with the following: "Fame follows 
applause where-ever it (Everett) goes. 1 ' 

We doubt if any teacher ever loved his pupils more 
deeply, or was more universally loved by them, than the 
subject of this article. In the success of his "boys," as 
he called them, both at the school and in their after life, 
he felt a profound interest; their triumphs were his tri- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 115 

umphs, and their failures caused him the keenest pain. 
The tact with which he adapted himself to the various 
temperaments and idiosyncrasies of his pupils, and the 
patience with which he bore any one's dullness, were also 
remarkable. We remember that one day a somewhat 
eccentric and outspoken student from Tennessee came to 
the Judge in the library of the Law School, and holding 
up an old folio, said: "Judge, what do you understand 
by this here Eule in Shelley's Case? I've been studying 
it three days, and can't make anything of it." " Shelley's 
Case! Shelley's Case!" exclaimed the Judge, with a look 
of astonishment, as he took the volume and held it up 
before his eyes, — " Do you expect to understand that in 
three days? Why, it took me three weeks!" 

One of the hobbies of Judge Story was the great 
blessings conferred on society by Courts of Equity, in 
remedying the defects of the Common Law. A favorite 
way of exposing these defects, was to put a case in which 
the inadequacy of the latter was strikingly apparent, and 
then naively ask the student: "Does it occur to you, 

Mr. , where your remedy in such a case would lie?" 

The invariable answer, " In a Court of Equity, Sir," was 
so . often repeated that it always provoked a smile from 
the students. Like many eminent men, Judge Story had 
his pet -quotations, anecdotes, and maxims, which he never 
wearied of repeating. Few of his living pupils can have 
forgotten the favorite " Causa proximo,, non remota spec- 
tatur" or the oft-cited aphorism of Rochefoucauld, " There 
is always something in the misfortunes of our best friends 
which does not displease us," — which must have impressed 
itself on the Judge's memory simply because in his nature 
there was not the slightest tincture of the cynicism which 
the sentiment expresses. 



116 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 

When a young lawyer, Judge Story published a volume 
entitled "Solitude, and other Poems" — a literary venture 
which he deeply regretted in after life. Most of the pieces 
were of the kind which " neither men, gods, nor booksellers' 
columns can endure," and the dedication began, — 

"Maid of my heart, to thee I string my lyre." 

Of this production few copies are extant, — the author 
having bought up and destroyed all he could find. There 
are two copies in Harvard College Library. He also pub- 
lished a Fourth-of-July oration, which contained about 
the average number of " spread-eagles." The ease with 
which he rhymed is well illustrated by the following 
verses. Chancing to step into the office of the Salem 
" Register,' 7 just as the first number was about to be 
issued, he was asked by the editor to write a motto for 
that newspaper. Taking a pen, young Story dashed off 
the following impromptu: 

"Here shall the press the people's rights maintain, 
Unawed by influence, and unhribed by gain: 
Here patriot truth her glorious precepts draw, 
Pledged to religion, liberty, and law." 

During the lifetime of Judge Story, a volume of " Mis- 
cellanies " from his pen was published, containing his 
literary orations, contributions to reviews, and his beauti- 
ful address at the consecration of Mount Auburn Ceme- 
tery. There, under the trees that overshadow the lovely 
dell in which he spoke, lie his remains; and in the 
chapel, near the entrance to this home of the dead, 
stands a marble statue of the great jurist, executed by 
his son, W. W. Story, the sculptor and poet, — an exqui- 
site work of art, in which all the characteristic qualities 
of the original are idealized, yet most faithfully repro- 
duced and preserved. 



MORAL GRAHAMISM. 



"1\ /T~ANY of our readers doubtless remember Sylvester 
-Lt-L Graham, the great originator and expounder of the 
bran-bread system of diet, and his theories. They remem- 
ber how eloquently he inveighed against the consumption 
of animal food, and how he startled all the old ladies, both 
male and female, throughout the length and breadth of the 
land, by telling them that tea was a slow poison, which 
would infallibly shorten their lives. It is said that one 
venerable old lady, who had entered upon her ninety-second 
year, abandoned with horror the delicious beverage, re- 
solved never to touch " the pizen " again, lest she should 
not live out half of her days. Many was the stout Falstaff 
that pined away to a skeleton under the Graham regimen. 
Robustious, corpulent fellows, — perfect Daniel Lamberts 
in ponderosity, — who had trundled along a mountain of 
flesh before trying a pea-soup diet, were suddenly reduced 
so thin as hardly to have weight enough to turn a money- 
scale, or opaqueness to cast a shadow. Horace Greeley 
came near being reduced to a " dried neat's tongue, a mere 
dagger of lath," or second Calvin Edson, by the experiment. 
At one time Graham had some ten thousand or more disci- 
ples in this country, *who not only were the sworn foes of 
beef, pork and mutton, but denounced Mocha and old Gov- 
ernment Java, scorned even Dr. Parr's compromise con- 



118 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 

cerning tea, — " non possum tecum vivere, nee sine te" — 
and declared, with Hood, that 

" If wine is a poison, so is tea, 
Only in another shape; 
What matter if one die 
By canister or grape? 

By long searching, Graham might now, if alive, muster 
a baker's dozen of followers; but probably, if they were 
marshaled, he would exclaim, with Falstaff, " I'll not march 
through Coventry with them, that's flat. Nay, and the 
villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves 
on." 

Now, just as there are Grahamites who think that, be- 
cause they are virtuous, there shall be "no more cakes and 
ale," — living skeletons, who 

"defy 
That which they love most tenderly; 
Quarrel with minced pie, and disparage 
Their hest and dearest friend, plum-porridge; 
Fat ox and goose itself oppose, 
And blaspheme custard through the nose," — 

so there are moral Grahamites, too. They have a certain 
course of mental dietetics, which they declare to be most 
conducive to the welfare of man, the microcosm, in his 
relations to the ^macrocosm. The moral Grahamites are 
the men who set their faces against the higher and more 
difficult branches of education taught in our colleges; who 
prefer the wholesome bran-bread of the practical sciences 
to the roast-beef and plum-pudding of scholastic lore. Give 
us, they say, the man who makes a new mowing-machine, 
or a Hobbs-defying, burglar-proof lock, harder to be opened 
than the riddle of the Egyptian sphinx; give us the man 
who can construct a tunnel under Lake Michigan, — who 
can build a railroad across the Rocky Mountains, or a first- 



MORAL GRAHAMISM. 119 

rate steamship. Such men are the great benefactors and 
movers of the world. The poet Longfellow, who makes 
Golden Legends; his neighbor, Winlock, who scoops up 
new asteroids from the depths of space; Powers, who 
carves statues in marble; Bierstadt, who transports us 
amid the marvels of the Yosemite; Whitney, who detects 
the affinities of remote languages, and Emerson, who culti- 
vates divine philosophy, — find little favor with our Gra- 
hamites. Look, they say, at Pullman and his palace res- 
taurant cars, and at Donald McKay and his big ships! 
Donald is the greatest man on our seaboard. And cer- 
tainly, if Providence intended that shipbuilding should be 
the end of our creation, he would be greater than Soc- 
rates or Plato, Shakspeare or Milton, and only equaled by 
Vanderbilt, James Fisk, Jr., or the late filibustering, law- 
less George Law. 

But what is this " practical " education for which so 
many persons are clamoring? Are there any two persons 
among them who can agree as to what it is? If by prac- 
tical education is meant that minimum of training and 
teaching which will just enable a man to house, clothe and 
feed himself, — to pay his bills and keep clear of the poor- 
house, which is summed up in the three R's, " Readin 1 , 
Ritin' and Rithmetic," — then we deny that such an educa- 
tion subserves, in the highest degree, even its own petty 
and selfish ends. The wretched economy which tries to sift 
the so-called practical from the true, the good, .and the 
beautiful, fails to get even the good it covets. But the 
most popular idea of a practical education is that which 
regards it as a training for a particular calling or profes- 
sion. Our colleges are begged to treat Smith's son as an 
incipient tape-seller, Brown's as an undeveloped broker, 



120 MOBAL GRAHAMISM. 

Thompson's as an embryo engineer, and Jones's as a bud- 
ding attorney. Well, we admit to the fullest extent the 
right of Smith, Brown, Thompson, and Jones, juniors, to 
qualify themselves for any occupation they choose; but we 
deny their right to demand of the State or of our colleges 
a special training which shall qualify them for buying 
calico, building bridges, drawing declarations, or speculat- 
ing in stocks. Young men demand an education which shall 
make them good merchants, lawyers, and carpenters; but 
they need first of all, and more imperiously than all things 
else, to be educated as men. 

Of a piece of timber you may make a mast, a machine, 
a piano, or a pulpit ; but, first of all, it must become timber, 
sound, solid, and well seasoned. The highest and truest 
education is not that which develops, trains, and strength- 
ens this or that faculty, but that which vitalizes and stimu- 
lates all the faculties; which does for the mind what the 
gymnasium does for the body, — energizes it by robust and 
bracing exercises. Whatever does this most effectually, — 
whatever makes the mind of the pupil conscious of its own 
energies, and gives it the power of rightly using them, — is 
the very thing he needs, however little use he may have for 
it after the drill is over. The thing he is taught, — the 
lesson learned, — is not the end, but the means of education. 
There can be no greater mistake made, than to suppose that 
a man is losing his time, unless he is learning something 
which can be turned to immediate account in the calling 
to which he is destined. Professor Maiden, in a lecture on 
the " Introduction of the Natural Sciences into General 
Education," has so ably exposed this fallacy, that we cannot 
help quoting the passage. In speaking of the demand made 
by some parents that education should have a direct relation 



MORAL GRAHAMISM. 121 

to gainful pursuits, — that, for example, a boy who is to 
spend his days among figures and calculations, in buying or 
in selling, in constructing engines or in navigating ships, 
should not " waste his time " in mastering Greek or Latin, 
the writer says: 

11 If the education of the body were the matter in ques- 
tion, instead of the education of the mind, the absurdity of 
this conduct would be abundantly manifest. Put the case 
of a boy of a weakly constitution and effeminate habits ; and 
suppose that family connections and interest make it seem 
desirable that he should enter the army, and that he is 
committed to the care of some one, — an old soldier, if you 
like, — who professes to prepare him for his military career. 
At the end of four or five years, when he ought to obtain 
his commission, his father may think it right to inquire 
into his fitness for his profession. ' Have you studied 
tactics?' ' No, sir.' 'Have you studied gunnery? 1 'No. 
sir.' ' Are you perfect in the last instructions issued from 
the Horse Guards for the manoeuvres of cavalry?' ' I have 
not seen them, sir.' ' Have you learned the broad-sword 
exercise?' 'No.' 'Can you put a company of infantry 
through their drill?' 'No.' ' Have you practiced platoon 
firing?' ' No.' ' Can you even fix a bayonet in a musket?' 
' I have never tried, sir.' After such an examination, we 
may suppose the father expostulating indignantly with the 
veteran under whose care his son had been placed. The 
latter might reply: ' Sir, when you entrusted your son to 
my training, he was weak and sickly; he had little appetite, 
and was fastidious in his eating; he could bear no exposure 
to the weather; he could not walk two miles without 
fatigue; he was incapable of any severer exercise; he was 
unwilling, and indeed unable, to join in the athletic sports 



122 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 

of boys of his age. Now he is in perfect health, and wants 
and wishes for no indulgence ; he can make a hearty dinner 
on any wholesome food, or go without it, if need be; he 
will get wet through, and care nothing about it; he can 
walk twelve or fifteen miles a day; he can ride; he can 
swim; he can skate; he can play a game at cricket, and 
enjoy it; though he has not learnt the broad-sword exer- 
cise, he fences well; though he has never handled a soldier's 
musket, he is an excellent shot with a fowling-piece; he has 
a firm foot, a quick eye, and a steady hand; he is a very 
pretty draughtsman; he is eager to enter his profession; 
and you may take my word for it, sir, he will make a brave 
and active officer.' " 

Was ever a method of training more triumphantly vin- 
dicated? The principle upon which the veteran rests his 
argument is, that by his system he has invigorated the 
physical constitution of his pupil, and so has fitted Mm for 
any profession in which habits of activity or of endurance 
may be required, — a principle which is equally sound when 
applied to the discipline of the mind. In the ancient gym- 
nasium, the first end sought was to produce a muscular 
man, an athlete. When this was accomplished, it mattered 
little whether he entered the lists of the wrestler, or of the 
boxer, or of the racer. The first and most indispensable 
requisite to success in any calling above that of a day- 
laborer, is mental vigor. A man may have a head crammed 
with information; he may be a walking encyclopaedia of 
facts and opinions, of dates and statistics on this subject 
and that; but without intellectual force, a trained and 
athletic mind, he is little better than the case that contains 
the books from which his knowledge has been drawn. The 
man who has had a special training, directed with exclusive 



MORAL GRAHAMISM. 123 

reference to a particular pursuit, may be well instructed, 
but in no sense can he be called an educated or cultivated 
man. As the development of a single member or organ 
of the body is not true physical culture, so the inordinate 
development of the memory, the imagination, or the rea- 
soning faculty, is not intellectual culture. The first con- 
dition of successful bodily labor is health; and, as a man in 
health can do what an unhealthy man cannot do, and as, 
of this health, the properties are strength, energy, agility, 
graceful carriage and action, manual dexterity, and endur- 
ance of fatigue, so, in like manner, general culture of mind 
is the best aid to professional and scientific study, and the 
educated man can do what the illiterate man cannot. As 
Prof. J. H. Newman, — himself a brilliant example of the 
culture that comes from liberal studies, — remarks: "The 
man who has learned to think, and to reason, and to 
compare, and to discriminate, and to analyze; who has 
refined his taste, and formed his judgment, and sharpened 
his mental vision, will not indeed at once be a lawyer, or a 
pleader, or an orator, or a statesman, or a physician, or a 
good landlord, or a man of business, or a soldier, or an 
engineer, or a chemist, or a geologist, or an antiquarian; 
but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he 
can take up any one of these sciences or callings, or any 
other for which he has a taste or special talent, with an 
ease, a grace, a versatility, and a success, to which another 
is a stranger." 

Let us not be misunderstood. We cherish no extreme 
opinions on this subject. We have no sympathy with 
those who think that all wisdom is summed up in a 
knowledge of Greek particles, — with the men who can 
give exactly all the dates of the petty skirmishes in the 



124 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 

Peloponnesian War, and yet have always supposed that 
Hyde and Clarendon were different persons, — or men 
like Dr. George, who doubted whether Frederick the Great, 
with all his victories, could conjugate a Greek verb in 
mi. We cannot think a tittle less of Burke's genius, 
because, in the House of Commons, he accented the 
antepenult instead of the penult of vedigal; or of the 
Duke of Wellington's, because, though he conquered 
Napoleon, he turned round, when reading his Chancellor's 
address at Oxford, and whispered, " I say, is it Jac-o-bus?" 
But we do contend that, as the records of human thought 
are in many languages, so no man can be deemed edu- 
cated who knows no language but a modern one, and 
that his own. That person cannot, certainly, be called 
an intelligent workman who has no care for the state or 
condition of the instrument with which he works. If 
the sword be blunt, or made of inferior steel, it will do 
little execution. If the vessel wants capacity, you cannot 
freight her with a valuable cargo; or if her engine wants 
power, she will make little headway against the billows. 
The mind is the man's instrument, be he lawyer, doctor, 
merchant, engineer, or farmer; and the stronger and more 
highly finished the instrument, the better will be its 
work. 

If there is any one faculty of the mind which is more 
valuable than the others, — which is absolutely indispen- 
sable to success in every calling, — it is the judgment. It 
is the master-principle of business, literature, and science, 
which qualifies one to grapple with any subject he may 
apply himself to, and enables him to seize the strong 
point in it. How is this power to be obtained? Is it 
by the study of any one subject, however important? 



MORAL GRAHAMISM. 125 

Assuredly not; but only by study and comparison of the 
most opposite things; by the most varied reading and 
discipline first, and observation afterwards. If there is 
one well-ascertained fact in education, it is, that the man 
who has been trained to think upon one subject will 
never be a good judge even in that one; whereas the 
enlargement of his circle gives him increased knowledge 
and power in a rapidly-increasing ratio, — so much do 
ideas act, not as solitary units, but by grouping and 
combination; so necessary is it to know something of a 
thousand other things, in order to know one thing well. 
It is, however, the meanest of all the cants of igno- 
rance to assert that there is any incompatibility between 
business or practical talents and scholarship, — for the 
successful booby to cry down accomplishments in the 
counting-room or the carpenter's shop. As if cultivated 
intelligence, added to refinement of manners and system- 
atic order, should accomplish less than undisciplined native 
power! — as if the Damascus blade lost its edge by being 
polished, or as if the supporting column of an edifice were 
less strong because its shaft is fluted and its capital carved ! 
We believe that it might easily be shown that a liberal 
education, which is only another name for intelligence, 
knowledge, intellectual force, promotes success in every 
honest calling, even though that calling be to cut cheese 
or open oysters, — or, even lower still, to make political 
speeches and electioneer for Congress. But, suppose that 
it were not so; that it did not contribute one jot or tittle 
to success, in the vulgar sense of that word. Were men 
designed to be mere merchants, farmers, or mechanics, and 
nothing more? Man is not a means, but an end. He 
claims a generous culture, not because he is to follow the 



126 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 

plow, wield the sledge, or buy and sell wheat or cotton, but 
because he is man. The fact that the ordinary pursuits 
of life are widely removed from liberal studies is of itself 
a cogent reason why those who are to be incessantly 
dealing with material forms should early foster a taste 
for those studies which, in the language of another, 
"reclaim men from the dominion of the senses; recruit 
their overtasked energies; quicken within them the sensi- 
bilities of taste; and invite them to the contemplation of 
whatever is lovely in the sympathies of our common 
nature, splendid in the conquests of intellect, or heroic in 
the trials of virtue. 1 ' 

Those who clamor for the so-called " practical educa- 
tion " forget that, antecedent to his calling as merchant, 
engineer, or carpenter, there is another profession, more 
important still, for which every man should be trained, 
" the profession of humanity.' 1 As Rousseau, in his famous 
treatise on education, which contains many golden truths 
imbedded among its errors, justly says: "Nature has 
destined us for the offices of human life, antecedently to 
our destination concerning society. To live, is the profes- 
sion I would teach him [a youth]. Let him first be a 
man; he will, on occasion, as soon become anything else 
that a man ought to be as any person whatever. Fortune 
may remove him from one place to another as she pleases; 
he will always be found in his place." We believe in 
"practical" education most sincerely; only we would use 
the word in its broadest and most comprehensive sense. 
We call that education practical which educes all a man's 
faculties, and gives him possession of himself. We call 
that practical education which enables a man to bring all 
his faculties to bear at once with energy and earnestness 



MORAL GRAHAMISM. 127 

on any given point, and to keep them fastened on that 
point # until the task he has set for them is accomplished. 
We call that education practical which gives a man a clear, 
conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, and 
enables him to develop them with fullness, to express them 
with eloquence, and to urge them with force. That is practi- 
cal education which teaches him to see things as they are, 
to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to 
detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. 
That is practical education which enables him to estimate 
with precision the worth of an argument, to detect the 
hidden relations of things, to trace effects to their causes, 
to grasp a mass of detached and dislocated facts, reduce 
them to order and harmony, and marshal them under the 
sway of some general law. That is practical education 
which enables him to know his own weakness, to command 
his own passions, to adapt himself to circumstances, to per- 
ceive the significance of actions, events, and opinions. 
That is practical education which opens his mind, expands 
it, and refines it; fits it to digest, master, and use its 
knowledge; gives it flexibility, tact, method, critical exact- 
ness, sagacity, discrimination, resource, address and expres- 
sion. 

Such a man is full of resources, and prepared for any 
event. Misfortunes cannot kill him, nor disasters depress 
him. He organizes victory out of defeat, and converts 
obstacles into stepping-stones to success. Life to him is 
never stale, flat, and unprofitable; but always fresh, 
stimulating, opulent. In the words of the polished writer 
already quoted, "He is at home in any society; he has 
common ground with every class; he knows when to 
speak, and when to be silent; he is able to converse, he 



128 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 

is able to listen; he can ask a question pertinently, and 
gain a lesson seasonably when he has nothing to impart 
himself; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a 
pleasant companion, and a comrade you can depend upon; 
he knows when to be serious, and when to trifle, and he 
has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with grace- 
fulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose 
of a mind which lives in itself while it lives in the 
world, and which has resources for its happiness at home 
when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves 
him in public and supports him' in retirement, without 
which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure 
and disappointment have a charm." 



STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 



DIO LEWIS, whose writings on bodiculture, if they 
are not very profound, have, at least, the merit of 
brevity and good sense, calls the attention of the public 
to the prevailing fallacy that strength is a synonym for 
health. He knows intelligent persons who really believe 
that you may determine the comparative health of two 
men by measuring their arms. The man whose arm 
measures twelve inches is twice as healthy as he whose 
arm measures but six. " This strange and thoughtless 
misapprehension," he says, " has given rise to nearly all 
the mistakes thus far made in the physical- culture move- 
ment. I have a friend who can lift nine hundred pounds, 
and yet is a habitual sufferer from torpid liver, rheuma- 
tism, and low spirits. The cartmen of our cities, who 
are our strongest men, are far from being the healthiest 
class, as physicians will testify. On the contrary, I have 
many friends who would stagger under three hundred 
pounds, that are in capital trim." 

These truths seem so obvious, when thus stated and 
illustrated, as hardly to rise above commonplace. Why, 
then, repeat them? Because, by the vast majority of 
" health-lifters," gymnasium-frequenters, and would-be ath- 
letes, they are either unknown or practically ignored. 
Every pale, sickly, pigmy-limbed man wants to be phys- 
ically strong; to be a Hercules, a son of Anak, at least 

129 



130 STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 

a small Heenan, is absoli^ely essential, lie thinks, to the 
eifjoyment of perfect health. If he cannot expect to lift 
a ton, or to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, 
he must, at least, be able to take a daily "constitutional" 
of five miles and back, or to raise five hundred pounds 
without bursting a blood-vessel. But what is the mean- 
ing of the word "strong"? From the glibness with 
which some men repeat the term, one would suppose 
that nothing is easier than to define it, — that the propo- 
sition that a man is very strong is as simple as the 
proposition that he is six feet high. The truth is, how- 
ever, that the word is ambiguous, — that under its seem- 
ing unity there lurks a real dualism of meaning, as a 
few facts will show. 

In the first place, one of the most obvious tests of 
strength is the power of exertion. But great power of 
exertion may co-exist with extreme delicacy of organism, 
and even with organic disease. Napoleon, who slept four 
hours and was on horseback twenty, — who toiled so ter- 
ribly that he half-killed his secretaries, — underwent 
fatigues that would have broken down nine out of 
ten "strong" men; yet his digestion was always delicate 
and easily deranged, and he died of an hereditary organic 
disease at the age of 55. Julius Caesar was not what is 
popularly called a "strong" man; yet he was a prodigy 
of exertion and endurance. Again: it is a striking fact 
that great power of exertion in one direction does not 
always imply its existence in another. There are hun- 
dreds of men who can perform tasks that severely tax 
the muscles, and endure with impunity all kinds of ex- 
posure and hardship, who collapse under a continuous 
and severe strain upon the eyes, the brain, and the 



STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 131 

nerves; and the converse is as often seen. Dr. Elam, the 
author of that deeply interesting work, " A Physician's 
Problems, 1 ' tells us that not long ago a friend reviewed 
with him the names of six or eight upper wranglers at 
the English Universities for the last twenty years, and 
•that, with very few exceptions, these and nearly all the 
"double first" men were alive and well; while, on the 
other hand, on reviewing the history of two boats' crews 
of picked men, of whom they had full and accurate in- 
formation, they found that not one of them was alive. 
Surely, such havoc as this was never found among men- 
tal athletes. 

Again, while there is a recognized limit to physical 
endurance, the limit to mental toil or strain is by no 
means so well defined. A man may saw wood, plough 
the earth, or lay brick, until he is physically exhausted, 
and can do no more; but the limit of mental labor is 
far less evident. Look at the amount of work which 
that dwarf, hunchback, and invalid, — that "drop of pure 
spirit in cotton wool," — Alexander Pope, contrived to 
perform! When he got up in the morning, he had to 
be sewed up in stiff canvass stays, without which he 
could not stand erect. His thin body was wrapped in 
fur and flannel, and his meagre, spectral legs required 
three pairs of stockings to give them a respectable look. 
Almost literally a pigmy in size, he was so deformed 
that his life was one long disease. Look at brave Samuel 
Johnson, so feeble as a child that the physician said he 
never knew another raised with such difficulty, — struggling 
all his life with a severe scrofulous disorder, that twisted 
his body into strange contortions, and with a constitu- 
tional depression and hypochondria, " a vile melancholy," 



132 STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 

that kept him, as he said, " mad half his life, or at least, 
not sober,' 1 — so languid at times that he could hardly 
tell the hour on the clock, and yet, with one pair of 
hands and one brain, doing the work of an academy! 
In spite of his exhausting labors and still more exhaust- 
ing diseases, he lived to the age of seventy-five. See, again, 
the giant labors performed by Channing, with his frail, 
clayey tabernacle; and note the vast amount of writing 
and other useful work performed by those physical ghosts 
of men, Professor Goddard, of Brown University, and 
the late Professor Hadley, of Yale! Need we add to these 
the cases of Torstenson, the Swedish General, who, af- 
flicted with gout, had to be borne on a litter, yet by the 
rapidity of his movements astonished Europe; or that of 
General Wolfe, who, though the seeds of several fatal dis- 
eases were laid in his constitution from infancy, yet 
wrested from the French the Gibraltar of America; or 
that of Palmerston, who, according to Sir Henry Holland, 
under a fit of gout which would have sent other men 
groaning to their couches, used to continue his work of 
reading or writing on public business almost without 
abatement, amid the chaos of papers which covered the 
floor as well as the tables of his room? 

But, some one will ask, has that spectral-looking lawyer, 
or that statesman, who apparently performs such prodigies 
of labor, — that pale, lean man with a face like parchment, 
and nothing on his bones, — a constitution? We answer in 
the words of the London " Times" to a similar query some 
years ago, — "Yes, he has; he has a working constitution, 
and a ten times better, one than you, my good friend, with 
your ruddy face, and strong, muscular frame. You look, 
indeed, the very picture of health, but you have, in reality, 



STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 133 

only a sporting constitution, not a working one. You do 
very well for the open air, and get on tolerably well with 
fine, healthy exercise, and no strain on your brain. But 
try close air for a week, — try confinement, with heaps of 
confused papers, blue books, law books, or books of refer- 
ence to get through, and therefrom extract liquid and 
transparent results, and you will find yourself knocked 
up and fainting, when the pale, lean man is — if not 'as 
fresh as a daisy,' which he never is, being of the perpetu- 
ally . cadaverous type, — at least as unaffected as a bit of 
leather, and not showing the smallest sign of giving way. 
There are two sorts of good constitutions, — good idle con- 
stitutions, and good working ones." 

Another test of strength is the power of enduring hard- 
ship, touching which we see repeated the paradox we have 
already noted. Far from being associated invariably with 
great muscular force, this power is often found in union 
with extreme delicacy of organization. Who, in catas- 
trophes and seasons of great peril, has not seen frail, deli- 
cate women, who would scream and almost faint at the 
sight of a mouse, bear up under toils, perils, and sufferings 
which would kill the stoutest men ? . Who has forgotten the 
lignum-vitse toughness of Dr. Kane? Though a sailor by 
profession, he never went to sea without suffering from 
sea-sickness; he had a heart disease and a chronic rheu- 
matism; yet he had a vitality, — an iron endurance, — which 
enabled him to go through sufferings in the Arctic Seas 
under which big, burly sailors, and other men specially 
trained to endure such hardships, sank into the grave. 
William III, of England, was not a strong man, nor was 
Luxemburg, his fiery opponent in the Netherlands. A 
Greek educator would have deemed it an abuse of the 



134 STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 

medical art to cherish the flickering flame of life in either 
of them. Yet it is doubtful whether among the two hun- 
dred thousand men whom they commanded, there was one 
with greater power of endurance than that of the hunch- 
backed dwarf that led the fiery hosts of France, or that of 
the asthmatic skeleton that conducted the stubborn troops 
of England. 

In thinking of the ideal of humanity, — the great man, 
— we almost always picture him as a noble bodily presence, 
full of health and vigor, and with a mind as healthy and 
vigorous as its abode. Yet how often is this notion contra- 
dicted by the facts ! In what mean and unsightly caskets 
have some of the rarest and most potent essences of nature 
been enclosed! 

Among the tests of strength, longevity must be consid- 
ered one; and here we are confronted by facts that make 
the explanation of " strength " still more difficult. Dr. 
Elam cites the names of twenty-five celebrated thinkers, 
than whom none have ever exerted a greater influence 
upon literature, history, and philosophy, who lived to the 
average age of ninety years. Yet many of them, it is well 
known, were prodigious workers and voluminous authors, 
and not a few of them, there is reason to believe, would be 
regarded by our modern physical- culture men as weaklings. 
One of them, G-alen, wrote three hundred volumes, and 
lived nearly a century; another, who had a very feeble 
constitution, and wrote seven or eight hours daily, — Lewis 
Cornaro, — reached a full hundred years. On the other 
hand, Dr. Winship, the leading apostle of " muscular Chris- 
tianity" in this country, who at one time could lift a 
weight of three thousand pounds, died at the age of forty- 
two. Ascertain the united ages of twenty-five of the most 
eminent farmers the world has seen, and is it probable that 



STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 135 

the sum total would amount, as in the case of these think- 
ers, to twenty-two hundred and fifty years'? 

It is customary, where a seemingly feeble man, tortured 
with disease, shows a durability or toughness which an 
athletic man lacks, outliving and outworking him, to ex- 
plain the mystery by saying that the former has " a better 
constitution 1 ' than the latter. But does this solve the 
riddle? Evidently not. It simply gives it another name. 
What is that thing which, for convenience, or to hide our 
ignorance, we call " constitution, " which may be constant- 
ly impaired, but has the ability to withstand so many 
shocks? It has been well observed by a thoughtful 
writer that " a table would not be called strong if two of 
its legs were cracked and several of its joints loose, how- 
ever tough might be its materials, and however good its 
original workmanship. But if the table showed a power 
of holding together and recovering itself, notwithstanding 
every sort of rough usage, it might well be called strong, 
though it was ultimately broken up; and its strength 
might not unnaturally be measured by the quantity of ill- 
usage which it survived. It is precisely in this power of 
self -repair that the difference between a body and a mere 
machine resides. The difficulty of saying what is meant 
by physical strength is in the difficulty of distinguishing 
between the mechanical and what, for fault of a better 
word, must be called the vital powers of the body. Look 
upon the body as a machine, and the broken arm, the 
tubercles in the lungs, or the cancer in the liver, prevent 
you from calling it strong; but, if it goes on acting for 
years, and wonderfully recovering itself again and again 
from the catastrophe which these defects tend to produce, 
there must be a strong something somewhere. What and 
where is that something?" 



PROFESSORSHIPS OP BOOKS AND 
READING.* 



rpiHE value of books as a means of culture is at this 
-*- day recognized by all men. The chief allies and 
instruments of teachers, they are the best substitutes 
for teacheVs, and, next to a good college, a good library 
may well be chosen as a means of education. Indeed, a 
book is a voiceless teacher, and a great library is a virtual 
university. A literary taste is at once the most efficient 
instrument of self- education and the purest source of en- 
joyment the world affords. It brings its possessor into 
ever-renewing communion with all that is noblest and best 
in the thought of the past. The winnowed and garnered 
wisdom of the ages is his daily food. Whatever is lofty, 
profound, or acute in speculation, delicate or refined in 
feeling, wise, witty, or quaint in suggestion, is accessible to 
the lover of books. They enlarge space for him and pro- 
long time. More wonderful than the wishing cap of the 
Arabian tales, they transport him back to former days. 
The orators declaim for him and the poets sing. He be- 
comes an inhabitant of every country, a contemporary of 
all ages, and converses with the wisest, the noblest, the 
tenderest, and the purest spirits that have adorned human- 
ity. All the sages have thought and have acted for him ; 

* This essay is reprinted, by permission, with some changes, from a paper 
contributed by the author to the Special Eeport on "The Public Libraries 
of the United States of America, their History, Condition and Management," 
lately made by Hon. John Eaton, LL.D., Commissioner of the U. S. Bureau of 
Education, and published at Washington. 
136 



PROFESSORSHIPS OP BOOKS AND READING. 137 

or, rather, he has lived with them; he has hearkened to 
their teachings; he has been the witness of their great 
examples; and, before setting his foot abroad in the world, 
has acquired the experience of more countries than the 
patriarchs saw. 

The most original thinkers have been most ready to 
acknowledge their obligations to other minds, whose wis- 
dom has been hived in books. Gibbon acquired from his 
aunt " an early and invincible love of reading, which," he 
declared, "he would not exchange for the treasures of 
India." Doctor Franklin traced his entire career to Cotton 
Mather's " Essays to Do Good," which fell into his hands 
when he was a boy. The current of Jeremy Bentham's 
thoughts was directed for life by a single phrase, " The 
greatest good of the greatest number," caught at the end 
of a pamphlet. Cobbett, at eleven, bought Swift's " Tale of 
a Tub," and it proved what he considered a sort of " birth 
of intellect." The genius of Faraday was fired by the vol- 
umes which he perused while serving as an apprentice to 
an English bookseller. One of the most distinguished per- 
sonages in Europe, showing his library to a visitor, ob- 
served that not only this collection, but all his social suc- 
cesses in life, he traced back to " the first franc he saved 
from the cake shop to spend at a bookstall." Lord Macau- 
lay, having asked an eminent soldier and diplomatist, who 
enjoyed the confidence of the first generals and statesmen 
of the age, to what he owed his accomplishments, was in- 
formed that he ascribed it to the fact that he was quar- 
tered, in his young days, in the neighborhood of an excel- 
lent library, to which he had access. The French historian 
Michelet attributed his mental inspiration to a single book, 
a Virgil, he lived with for some years ; and he tells us that 
6* 



138 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

an odd volume of Racine, picked up at a stall on the quay, 
made the poet of Toulon. " If the riches of both Indies," 
said Fenelon, " if the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe, 
were laid at my feet, in exchange for my love of reading, 
I would spurn them all." Books not only enrich and en- 
large the mind, but they stimulate, inflame, and concen- 
trate its activity; and though without this reception of 
foreign influence a man may be odd, he cannot be original. 
The greatest genius is he who consumes the most knowl- 
edge and converts it into mind. What, indeed, is college 
education but the reading of certain books which the com- 
mon sense of all scholars agrees will represent the science 
already accumulated ? 

A well-known American writer says that books are only 
for one's idle hours. This may be true of an Emerson; 
but how many Emersons are there in the reading public? 
If the man who gets almost all his information from the 
printed page, "needs a strong head to bear that diet," 
what must be the condition of his head who abstains from 
this aliment? A Pascal, when his books are taken from 
him to save his health, injured by excessive study, may 
supply their place by the depth and force of his personal 
reflection; but there is hardly one Pascal in a century. 
Wollaston made many discoveries with a hatful of lenses 
and some bits of glass and crystal; but common people 
need a laboratory as rich as Tyndall's. To assume that 
the mental habits which will do for a man of genius will 
do for all men who would make the most of their facul- 
ties, is to exaggerate an idiosyncrasy into a universal law. 
The method of nature, it has been well said, is not ecstasy, 
but patient attention. " There are two things to be con- 
sidered in the matter of inspiration; one is, the infinite 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 139 

God from whom it comes, the other the finite capacity 
which is to receive it. If Newton had never studied, it 
would have been as easy for God to have revealed the cal- 
culus to his dog Diamond as to Newton. We once heard 
of a man who thought everything was in the soul, and so 
gave up all reading, all continuous thought. Said another, 
1 If all is in the soul, it takes a man to find it.' " It is true 
that, as Ecclesiasticus tells us, " a man's mind is sometimes 
wont to tell him more than seven watchmen that sit above 
in a high tower"; but it is also true that the man will 
hear most of all who hearkens to his own mind and to the 
seven watchmen besides. 

No doubt books, like every other blessing, may be 
abused. "Reading," as Bacon says, " makes a full man"; 
and so does eating; but fullness, without digestion, is 
dyspepsia, and induces sleepiness and flabbiness, both fatal 
to activity. The best books are useless, if the book- worm 
is not a living creature. The mulberry leaf must pass 
through the silkworm's stomach before it can become silk, 
and the leaves which are to clothe our mental nakedness 
must be chewed and digested by a living intellect. The 
mind of the wise reader will react upon its acquisitions, 
and will grow rich, not by hoarding borrowed treasures, 
but by turning everything into gold. There are readers 
whose wit is so smothered under the weight of their accu- 
mulations as to be absolutely powerless. It was said of 
Robert Southey that he gave so much time to the minds of 
other men that he never found time to look into his own. 
Robert Hall said of Dr. Kippis that he piled so many books 
upon his head that his brains could not move. It was to 
such helluones Ubrorum, or literary anacondas, who are 
possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it, that 



140 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

Hobbes of Malmesbury alluded, when he said that had he 
read as many books as other men, he would have known 
as little. There is in many minds, as Abernethy com- 
plained of his, a point of saturation, which if one passes, 
by putting in more than his mind can hold, he only drives 
out something already in. The history of competitive ex- 
aminations shows that the kind of knowledge gained by 
cramming is painfully evanescent; it melts away with lack 
of use, and leaves nothing behind. It was one of the ad- 
vantages of the intellectual giants of old, that the very 
scantiness of their libraries, by compelling them to think for 
themselves, saved them from that habit of intellectual de- 
pendence, — of supplying one's ideas from foreign sources, — 
which is as sure to enfeeble the thinking faculty as is a 
habit of dram-drinking to enfeeble the tone of the stomach. 
But though books may be thus abused, and many fine wits, 
like Dr. Oldbuck's, "lie sheathed to the hilt in ponderous 
tomes," will any man contend that such abuse is neces- 
sary? The merely passive reader, who never wrestles with 
his author, may seem to be injured by the works he pe- 
ruses; but in most cases the injury was done before he 
began to read. A really active mind will not be weighed 
down by its knowledge any more than an oak by its leaves, 
or than was Samson by his locks. John Milton walked 
gracefully enough under the load of his immense learning; 
and the flame of Bishop Butler's genius was certainly not 
stifled by the mass of books he consumed. Great piles of 
fuel, which put out the little fires, only make the great 
fires burn. If a man is injured by multifarious knowl- 
edge, it is not because his mind does not crave and need 
the most various food, but because it " goes into a bad 
skin." His learning is mechanically, not chemically, 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 141 

united to the mind; incorporated by contact, and not by 
solution. The author of "Hudibras" tells us that the 
sword of his hero sometimes 

" — ate into itself for lack 
Of somebody to hew or hack." 

and there is reason to believe that the mind may be as 
fatally enfeebled by turning perpetually upon itself, and 
refusing all' help or impulse from abroad, as by burying 
itself among books, and resting upon the ideas of other 
men. There are drones in cells as well as in libraries. 

Such being the value of books, how can the college stu- 
dent better spend his leisure time, beyond what is required 
for sleep, meals, bodily exercise, and society, than in read- 
ing? But what books shall he read, and how shall he read 
them? Shall he let his instincts guide him in the choice, 
or shall he read only the works which have been stamped 
with the approval of the ages? How may he acquire, if 
he lacks it, a taste for the highest types, the masterpieces, 
of literature? Are there any critical tests by which the 
best books may be known, and is there any art by which 
"to pluck out the heart of their mystery"? These ques- 
tions, if he is a thoughtful young man, anxious to make 
the most of his time and opportunities, will confront him 
at the very threshold of his college life. Of the incom- 
petency of most students to answer them for themselves, 
those persons who have watched them when drawing books 
from college libraries can have little doubt. Not to speak 
of the undergraduates who read merely for amusement, or 
of the intellectual epicures who touch nothing but dainties, 
nibbling at a multitude of pleasant dishes without getting 
a good meal from any, — how few, even of the laborious 
and conscientious students who would economize their pre- 



142 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

cious moments, read wisely, with definite purpose or plan! 
How many, ignorant that there is a natural order of ac- 
quirement, — that, for young readers, biography is better 
than history, history than philosophy, descriptive poetry 
than metaphysical, — begin with the toughest, the most 
speculative, or the most deluding books the} 7 " can find! 
How many, having been told that the latest works in cer- 
tain departments of knowledge are the best, plunge at once 
into Mill, Spencer, Buckle, Darwin, and Taine! — books 
pre-eminently suggestive to well-trained minds, but too 
difficult of digestion for minds not thoroughly instructed. 
There is, perhaps, no more frequent folly of the young 
than that of reading hard, knotty books, for the sake of 
great names, — neglecting established facts in science, his- 
tory, and literature to soar into regions where their vanity 
is flattered by novel and daring speculations. 

Again, how many students read books through by rote, 
without interest or enjoyment, without comprehending or 
remembering their contents, simply because they have been 
told to read them, or because some great man has profited 
by them ! Who has not seen young men plodding wearily 
through bulky volumes of history or science, utterly 
unsuited to their actual state of development, under the 
delusion that they were getting mental strength and illu- 
mination, when, in fact, they were only inflaming their 
eyes and wasting their precious time? An heroic fresh- 
man, full of enthusiasm, and burning to distinguish him- 
self by some literary conquest, fancies that it would be 
"a grand thing" to possess himself of universal history, 
and so he attacks the history of the world, in seven 
volumes, by M. Charles Rollin. He plods through Hume, 
Gibbon, Robertson, and other " works which no gentle- 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 143 

man's library should be without, 1 ' journeying over page 
after page with incredible patience, and with a scrupulous 
attention to notes, and, in rare cases, to maps, that is 
morally sublime. No tome is too thick for him, no type 
too small; whether the author is luminous or voluminous, 
it is all the same to him. Years pass, perhaps the young- 
man graduates, before the truth flashes upon him that the 
object of reading is not to know books, but things; that its 
value depends upon the insight it gives; and that it is no 
more necessary to remember the books that have made one 
wise than it is to remember the dinners which have made 
one strong. He finds that instead of enriching and 
invigorating his mind he has taken the most effectual 
course to stultify it. He has crammed his head with 
facts, but has extracted from them no wisdom. He has 
mistaken the husks of history for the fruit, and has no 
more assimilated his heterogeneous acquisitions than a 
millstone assimilates the corn it grinds. The corn wears 
out the millstone, giving it a mealy smell; and the books 
have worn out the student, giving him only the faintest 
odor of intellectual culture and discipline. Almost every 
college has its literary Calvin Edsons, — living skeletons 
that consume more mental food than the strong and 
healthy, yet receive from it little nourishment, — remaining 
weak and emaciated on much, while the man of sound 
constitution grows vigorous on little. 

The difficulties of deciding what books to read are 
greatly multiplied in our day by the enormous number of 
volumes that weigh down the shelves of our libraries. In 
the National Library at Paris it is said there are 800,000 
separate volumes, or, according to a late writer's estimate, 
148,760 acres of printed paper! The library of the British 



144 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

Museum, which contains over 700,000 separate volumes, is 
said to have forty miles of book shelves. And yet the 
largest library in the world does not contain over a 
quarter part of the books that have been printed since 
the time of Gutenberg and Fust, while new books are 
flying from the press as thick as snowflakes on a wintry 
day. Five thousand new publications are issued in a year 
in England, and it has been ascertained that over ten thou- 
sand works, including maps, or a million volumes, are 
poured forth annually from the press of Germany alone. 
The Leipsic catalogue contains the names of fifty thousand 
German authors, and it is estimated that the time will 
speedily come when the number of German writers will 
exceed that of German readers. What reader is not 
appalled by such statistics? Who can cope with even the 
masterpieces of literature, to say nothing of the scientific 
and theological works, whose numbers are increasing in 
geometrical ratio? Steel pens and steam-presses have 
multiplied the power of production, and railways hurry 
books to one's door as fast as printed; but what has 
increased the cerebrum and the cerebellum ? The two lobes 
of the human brain are not a whit larger to-day than 
when Adam learned his ab\s and eVs in the great book 
of nature. The spectacles by which we may read two 
books at once are yet to be invented. De Quincey calcu- 
lates that if a student were to spend his entire life from 
the age of twenty to eighty in reading only, he might 
compass the mere reading of some twenty thousand 
volumes; but, as many books should be studied as well as 
read, and some read many times over, he concludes that 
five to eight thousand is the largest number which a 
student in that long life could hope to master. What 






PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 145 

realms of books, then, must even the Alexanders of letters 
leave unconquered ! The most robust and indefatigable 
reader who essays to go through an imperial library cannot 
extract the honey from one-twentieth of this hive ; though 
he read from dawn to dark, he must die in the first 
alcoves. 

It is true that, in another view, the facts are not quite 
so discouraging. Newton said that if the earth could be 
compressed into a solid mass, it could be put into a nut- 
shell ; and so, if we could deduct from the world of books all 
the worthless ones and all those thtit are merely repetitions, 
commentaries, or dilutions of the thoughts of others, we 
should find it shrunk into a comparatively small compass. 
The learned Huet, who read incessantly till he was ninety- 
one, and knew more of books perhaps than any other man 
down to his time, thought that if nothing had been said 
twice, everything that had ever been written since the 
creation of the world, the details of history excepted, might 
be put into nine or ten folio volumes. Still, after all de- 
ductions have been made, the residuum of printed matter 
which one would like to read is so great as to be absolutely 
terrifying. The use of books is to stimulate and replenish 
the mind, to give it stuff to work with, — ideas, facts, senti- 
ments; but to be deluged with these is as bad as to lack 
them. A mill will not go if there is too little water, but it 
will be a-s effectually stopped if there is too much. The 
day of encyclopaedic scholarship has gone by. Even that 
ill-defined creature, " a well-informed man," is becoming 
every year more and more rare; but the Huets and the 
Scaligers, — the Bacons, who " take all knowledge to be 
their province," and the Leibnitzes, who presume " to 
drive all the sciences abreast," — must soon become as 
7 



146 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

extinct as the megatherium or the ichthyosaurus. The 
most ambitious reader who now indulges in what Sydney 
Smith calls the foppery of universality, speedily learns 
that no individual can grasp in the limits of a lifetime 
even an elementary knowledge of the many provinces of 
old learning, enlarged as they are by the vast annexations 
of modern discovery; and, like Voltaire's little man of 
Saturn, who lived only during five hundred revolutions, 
or fifteen thousand of our years, he complains, as he 
closes his career, that scarcely has he begun to pick up 
a little knowledge before he is called on to depart. 

For all these reasons we cannot but think that our 
colleges, while they provide the student with libraries, 
should also provide him with a professor of books and 
reading. It is not enough to introduce him to these quar- 
ries of knowledge; he should also be taught where to sink 
his shafts and how to work them. Mr. Emerson, speaking 
of such a professorship in one of his later essays, says : 
" I think no chair is so much wanted." Even the ripest 
scholar is puzzled to decide what books he shall read 
among the myriads that clamor for his attention. What, 
then, must be the perplexity of one who has just entered 
the fields of literature! If in Bacon's time some books 
were "to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few 
to be chewed and digested," how much greater must 
seem the necessity of discrimination at this day, when the 
amount of literary pabulum has quadrupled and even 
quintupled! Is there not then an absolute necessity that 
the student who would economize his time and make the 
best use of his opportunities, should be guided in his 
reading by a competent adviser? Will it be said that, 
according to the theory of a collegiate education, the 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READIKG. 147 

studies of the curriculum will demand all his time; that 
he will have no spare hours for general culture? We 
reply that, as a matter of fact, whatever the theory, in 
no college does the student, as a rule, give his whole 
time to the regular lessons, however long or difficult. 
Unless very dull or poorly prepared, the student does 
find time to read, — often several hours a day, — and he 
is generally encouraged to do so by the professors. The 
question, therefore, is not whether he shall concentrate 
all his time and attention upon his text-books, but 
whether he shall read instructive books, for a definite 
purpose and under competent direction, or shall acquire, 
without direction, the merest odds and ends of knowledge. 
We live in a day when it is the practice in every 
calling to utilize things which were once deemed value- 
less. In some of the great cities of Europe even the 
sweepings of the streets are turned to account, being sold 
to contractors who use them as dressing for farms. In 
the United States Mint at Philadelphia the visitor to the 
gold irooni notices a rack placed over the floor for him 
to walk on; on inquiring its purpose, he is told that it 
is to prevent the visitor from carrying away with the 
dust of his feet the minute particles of precious metal 
which, in spite of the utmost care, will fall upon the 
floor when the rougher edges of the bar are filed, and 
that the sweepings of the building save yearly thousands 
of dollars. How much more precious are the minute 
fragments of time which are wasted by the young, especi- 
ally by those who are toiling in the mints of knowledge ! 
Who can estimate the value to a college student of this 
golden dust, these raspings and parings of life, these 
leavings of days and remnants of hours, so valueless 



148 PBOFESSOBSHIPS OF BOOKS AtfD BEADING. 

singly, so inestimable in the aggregate, could they be 
gleaned up and turned to mental improvement! Let us 
suppose that a young man, on entering college, econo- 
mizes the odds and ends of his time so far as to read 
thoughtfully twelve pages of history a day. This would 
amount, omitting Sundays, to about three thousand seven 
hundred pages, or twelve volumes of over three hundred 
pages each, in a year. At the end of his college course 
he would have read forty-eight volumes, — enough to have 
made him master of all the leading facts, with much of 
the philosophy, of history; with the great, paramount 
works of English literature; with the masterpieces (in 
translations) of French, German, Spanish, and Italian 
literature, and with not a little of the choicest periodical 
literature of the day. What a fund of knowledge, of 
wisdom, and of inspiration would these forty-eight vol- 
umes, well chosen, well understood, and well digested, be 
to him! What a quickening, bracing, and informing 
study would even one great book prove ! The histories of 
Hallam, Grote, Merivale, Mommsen, Milman, Macaulay, 
Motley; Clarendon's gallery of portraits, Gibbon's great 
historic painting; any one of these might date an epoch 
in the student's intellectual life. The thorough, consci- 
entious study of any masterpiece of literature, Dr. John- 
son thought, wo aid make a man a dangerous intellectual 
antagonist. Over and above all this, the student would 
have formed habits of self-improvement and of economy 
in the use of his time which would be of more value 
than his acquisitions, and would influence his whole life. 
In saying this we do not forget that it is not well for 
the intellectual worker to be always in the harness, or 
to be a slave to the clock. We have no sympathy with 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 149 

those persons who, with a pair of compasses, divide the 
day into portions, alloting one portion and no more to 
one thing, and another portion to another, and who think 
it a sin to lose a minute. On the contrary, we believe 
there is a profound truth in the saying of Tillier that 
"le temps le mieux employe est celui que Ton perd." 
Much of our education, even of our best education, is 
acquired, not only out of school, but out of the study, 
in the hours which morbid or mechanical workers con- 
sider lost. Deduct from our acquisitions all that is 
learned in seemingly idle hours, in times of recreation 
and social intercourse, and the residuum would be a heap 
of bones without flesh to cover them. Making, however, 
all deductions for necessary rest and relaxation, we still 
believe there are few students who cannot find time to 
read twelve pages a day. Are there not many who through 
ignorance of what to read, and how to read, and even of 
the chief advantages of reading, waste double this time? 
Will it be said that it is enough for the student to 
read a few choice authors, — to absorb thoroughly a half- 
dozen or more representative books, — and that these he 
can select for himself? No doubt there are advantages 
in thus limiting one's reading. So far as reading is not 
a pastime, but a part of the systematic cultivation of the 
faculties, it is useful only so far as it implies close and 
intimate knowledge. The mind should be not a vessel 
only, but a vat. A man may say that he has read Mil- 
ton's minor poems, if he has skimmed over them lightly 
as he would skim over the columns of a newspaper, or 
if he dispatches them as a person boasted that he had 
gone through a geometry in one afternoon, only skipping 

the A's, and B's, and crooked lines that seemed to have 

i 



150 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

been thrown in to intercept his progress; but he has not 
read them to any good purpose until they have fascinated 
his imagination and sunk into his memory. Really great 
books must be read and re-read with ceaseless iteration, 
must be chewed and digested till they are thoroughly 
assimilated, till their ideas pass like the iron atoms of 
the blood into the mental constitution; and they hardly 
begin to give weight and power to the intellect, till we 
have them so by heart that we scarcely need to look into 
them. It is not in the number of facts one has read 
that his intellectual power lies, but in the number he 
can bring to bear on a given subject, and in his ability 
to treat them as data, or factors of a new product, in an 
endless series. 

It is hardly possible to censure too sharply what Sir 
William Hamilton calls " the prevailing pestilence of 
slovenly, desultory, effeminate reading." A great deal 
of the time thus spent is but the indulgence of intel- 
lectual dram-drinking, affording a temporary exhilaration, 
but ultimately emasculating both mind and character. 
The Turk eats opium, the Hindoo chews tobacco and 
betel nut, the. civilized Christian reads; and opium, tobacco, 
and books, all alike tend to produce that dizzy, dreamy, 
drowsy state of mind which unfits a man for all the 
active duties of life. But true as all this is, " the man 
of one book," or of a few books, is, we fear, a Utopian 
dream rather than a reality, in this nineteenth century. 
The young man who has a keen, vigorous appetite for 
knowledge, and who would be abreast with his age, will 
never be content to feed on a few choice authors, even 
though each be a library. He knows that as the Ama- 
zon and the Mississippi have hundreds of tributaries, so 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 151 

it is with every great stream of knowledge. He sees that 
such are the interrelations and overlappings of science 
that, to know one subject well, it is necessary to know 
something of a thousand others. He recognizes, sooner 
or later, the fact that, as Maclaurin says, " our knowledge 
is vastly greater than the sum of what all its objects 
separately could afford; and when a new object comes 
within our reach, the addition to our knowledge is the 
greater the more we already know; so that it increases, 
not as the new objects increase, but in a much higher 
proportion." Above all, he knows that, as in our animal 
economy it is a disastrous policy to eat exclusively the 
nitrates which contribute to the muscles, the phosphates 
which feed the brain and nerves, or the carbonates which 
develop fat, so we starve a part of our mental faculties 
if we limit our mental diet to a few dishes. The intel- 
lectual epicure who would feed on a few choice authors 
is usually the laudator temporis acti, — the indiscriminate 
eulogist of the past; and this, of itself, renders worthless 
all his recipes for mental culture, and cuts him off from 
the sympathy of the young. He is forever advising them 
to read only classic authors, which would be to live in 
an intellectual monastery. It is quite possible to feed a 
young man with too concentrated a diet. It has been 
truly said by a wise teacher that if there is one law more 
sure than another in intellectual development, it is that 
the young must take their start in thought and in taste 
from the models of their own time; from the men whose 
fame has not become a tradition, but is ringing in clear 
and loud notes in the social atmosphere around us. 

There are some persons, no doubt, who are opposed to 
all guidance of the young in their reading. They would 



152 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

turn the student loose into a vast library and let him 
browse freely in whatever literary pastures may please 
him. With Johnson they say, " Whilst you stand deliber- 
ating which book your son shall read first, another boy 
has read both; read anything five hours a day, and you 
will soon be learned. 11 Counsel, advice in the choice of 
books, they condemn as interfering with the freedom of 
individual taste and the spontaneity which is the condition 
of intellectual progress. " Read," they say to the young 
man, "what you can read with a keen and lively relish; 
what charms, thrills, or fascinates you; what stimulates 
and inspires your mind, or satisfies your intellectual 
hunger; 'in brief, sir, study what you most affect.'" No 
doubt there is a vein of wisdom in this advice. It is quite 
possible to order one's reading by too strict and formal a 
rule. A youth will continue to study only that in which 
he feels a real interest and pleasure, constantly provoking 
him to activity. It is not the books which others like, 
or which they deem best fitted for him, that he will read 
and read with profit, but the books that hit his tastes 
most exactly and that satisfy his intellectual cravings. 
No sensible educator will prescribe the same courses of 
reading for two persons, or lay down any formal, cast- 
iron rules for the direction of the mental processes. That 
which is the most nutritious aliment of one mind may 
prove deleterious and even poisonous to another. 

To some extent, too, the choice of books may be left 
to individual taste and judgment. There will be times 
when, under the attraction of a particular subject, or the 
magnetism of a particular author, it may be advisable to 
break away from the prescribed list, and follow the 
thoughtful promptings of nature. That must be a sorry 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 153 

,t ameness of intellect that feels no impulse to get out of 
the groove of even the most judicious course of reading. 
Again, there are some minds that have an eclectic quality 
which inclines them to the reading they require, and in a 
library they not only instinctively pounce upon the books 
they need, but draw at once from them the most valu- 
able ideas as the magnet draws the iron filings scattered 
through a heap of sand. But these are rare cases, and 
can furnish no rule for general . guidance. To assert that 
a learned and judicious adviser cannot help the ordinary 
student in the choice of books, is to assert that all teach- 
ing is valueless. If inspiration, genius, taste, elective 
affinities are sufficient in the selection and reading of 
books, why not also in the choice of college studies? 
Why adopt a curriculum? The truth is, the literary 
appetite of the young is often feeble, and oftener capri- 
cious or perverted. While their stomachs generally reject 
unwholesome food, their minds often feed on garbage and 
even poison. The majority of young persons are fond of 
labor-saving processes and short cuts to knowledge, and 
have little taste for books which put much strain upon the 
mind. The knowledge too easily acquired may impart 
a temporary stimulus and a kind of intellectual keen- 
ness and cleverness, but it brings no solid advantage. 
It is, in fact, "the merest epicurism of intelligence, — 
sensuous, but certainly not intellectual." Magnify as we 
may the necessity of regarding individual peculiarities 
in education, it is certain that genius, inspiration, or 
an affinity for any kind of knowledge, does not necessarily 
exclude self-knowledge, self-criticism, or self-control. As 
another has said: "If the genius of a man lies in the 
development of the individual person that he is, his man- 



154 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

hood lies in finding out by study what he is, and what he 
may become, and in wisely using the means that are fitted 
to form and perfect his individuality." 

Will it be said that there are manuals or " courses of 
reading," such as Pycroft's, or President Porter's excellent 
work, by the aid of which an undergraduate may select 
his books without the aid of a professor? We answer that 
such manuals, while they are often serviceable, can never 
do the work of a living guide and adviser. Books can 
never teach the use of books. No course of reading, how- 
ever ideally good, can be exactly adapted to all minds. 
Every student has his idiosyncrasies, his foibles, his " stond 
or impediment in the wit," as Bacon terms it, which must 
be considered in choosing his reading-matter, so that not 
only his tastes may be in some degree consulted, but " every 
defect of the mind may have a special receipt." 

Will it be objected to our plan, that a vast majority of 
American colleges are ill endowed, and cannot afford to 
have a Professorship of Books and Reading, however de- 
sirable? We reply that such a chair, specially endowed, 
is not indispensable; but that its duties, in the smaller 
colleges, might be discharged by the professor of English 
Literature, or by an accomplished librarian. 

But, it. may be asked, what are the qualifications, and 
what will • be the duties, of such a literary gustator and 
guide? We reply that a professor of books and reading 
should be a man of broad and varied culture, with cath- 
olic tastes, a thorough knowledge of bibliography, espe- 
cially of critical literature, and much knowledge of men; 
one who can readily detect the peculiarities of his pupils, 
and who, in directing their reading, will have constant 
reference to these as well as to the order of nature and 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 155 

intellectual development. While he may prepare, from 
time to time, courses of reading on special topics, and espe- 
cially on those related to the college studies, he will be still 
more useful in advising the student how to read most advan- 
tageously; in what ways to improve the memory; how to 
keep and use commonplace books; when to make abstracts; 
and in giving many other hints which books on reading 
never communicate, and which suggest themselves only to 
one who has learned after many years of experience and 
by many painful mistakes the secret of successful study. 
He will see that the young men who look to him as their 
guide read broadly and liberally, yet care " multum legere 
potiiis quam multa" He will see that they cultivate " the 
pleasure grounds as well as the corn fields of the mind"; 
that they read not only the most famous books, but the 
best reputed current works on each subject; that they read 
by subjects, and not by authors; perusing a book not be- 
cause it is the newest or the oldest, but because it is the 
very one they need to help them on to the next stage of 
their inquiries; and that they practice subsoil plowing by 
re-reading the masterpieces of genius again and again. 
Encouraging them to read the books they " do honestly 
feel a wish and curiosity to read," he will teach them to 
discriminate, nevertheless, between true desire, the moni- 
tion of nature, and that superficial, false desire after 
spiceries and confectioneries, which, as Carlyle says, is 
" so often mistaken for the real appetite, lying far deeper, 
far quieter, after solid nutritive food"; and, discouraging 
short cuts in general, he will yet often save the student 
days of labor by pointing out some masterly review article 
in which is condensed into a few pages the quintessence 
of many volumes. 



156 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READIKG. 

Perhaps one of the greatest services which such a 
teacher might perform for the undergraduate would be 
in showing him how to, economize his reading, — how to 
transfer or inspirit into his brain the contents of a good 
book in the briefest time. At this day, the art of read- 
ing, or at least one of the arts, is to skip judiciously, — 
to omit all that does not concern us, while missing noth- 
ing that we really need. Some of the best thinkers rarely 
begin a book at the beginning, but dive right into the 
middle, read enough to seize the leading idea, dig out 
the heart of it, and then throw it by. In this way a 
volume which cost the author five years of toil, they will 
devour at a night's sitting, with as much ease as a spider 
would suck the juices of a fly, leaving the wings and legs 
in the shape of a preface, appendix, notes, and conclusion 
for a boiled joint the next day. It is said that Patrick 
Henry read with such rapidity that he seemed only to 
run his eye down the pages of a book, often to leap over 
the leaves, seldom to go regularly through any passage; 
and yet, when he had dashed through a volume in this 
race-horse way, he knew its contents better than anybody 
else. Stories similar to this of " the forest-born Demos- 
thenes " are told of some of his contemporaries. Won- 
ders are recounted of their powers of perusal; how 
Johnson would swoop down upon his prey like the eagle, 
and tear out the heart of a book at once; how Burke, 
reading a book as if he were never to see it again, de- 
voured two octavo volumes in a stage-coach; and how 
package after package of these sweet medicines of the 
mind were thrown in to Napoleon on the island of St. 
Helena, like food to a lion, and with hoc presto dis- 
patched. It is said that Coleridge rarely read a book 



PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 157 

through, but would plunge into the marrow of a new 
volume, and feed on all the nutritious matter with sur- 
prising rapidity, grasping the thought of the author, and 
following out his reasonings to consequences of which he 
had never dreamed. 

Chief-Justice Parsons, of Massachusetts, who, according 
to Chief-Justice Parker, " knew more law than anybody 
else, and knew more of other things than he did of law," 
read books with a similar rapidity, taking in the mean- 
ing not by single words but by whole sentences, which 
enabled him to finish several books in a single evening. 
Thierry, the historian, tells us of himself that from the 
habit of devouring long pages in folio, in order to ex- 
tract a phrase and sometimes one word among a thou- 
sand, he acquired a faculty which astonished him, — that 
of reading in some way by intuition, and of encountering 
almost immediately the passage that would be useful to 
him, — all the vital power seeming to tend toward a single 
vital point. Carlyle devours books in the same wholesale 
way, plucking out from an ordinary volume "the heart 
of its mystery " in two hours. It is absurd, of course, to 
suppose that every man, — above all, that young men, — 
will be able with profit to dash through books as did 
these great men; but all students can be taught how, by 
practice, to come nearer and nearer to such a habit. It 
is a miserable bondage to be compelled to read all the 
words in a book to learn what is in it. A vigorous, live 
mind will fly ahead of the words of an author and antic- 
ipate his thought. Instead of painfully traversing the 
vales of commonplace, it will leap from peak to peak on 
the summit of his ideas. Great quickness, acuteness, and 
power of concentration are required to do this; but it is 



158 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 

a faculty susceptible of cultivation and measurably attain- 
able by all. The first thing to be learned by every stu- 
dent is hoiv to read. Few know how, because few have 
made it a study. Many read a book 'as if they had taken 
a sacramentum militare to follow the author through all 
his platitudes and twaddle. Like the American sloth, 
they begin at the top of the tree, and never leave it till 
they have devoured all of which they can strip it, whether 
leaves or fruit. Others read languidly, without re-acting 
on the author or challenging his statements, when the 
pulse should beat high, as if they were in battle and the 
sound of the trumpet were in their ears. We are told by 
Dr. 0. W. Holmes, who was a classmate of the late Dr. 
H. B. Hackett, that when the latter was at Phillips Acad- 
emy, Andover, he " fastened his eyes upon a book as if it 
were a will making him heir to a million.'" A reader 
who is thus enthusiastic, and knows the secret of his art, 
will get through a book in far less time, and master it 
more thoroughly than another, who, ignorant of the art, 
has plodded through every page. 



THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 



rTIHE science of cookery, which has so long been neg- 
-*- lected by Americans, is beginning at last to provoke 
their attention. The labors of Professor Blot mark an 
epoch in our dietetic history. In lectures and magazine 
essays he has taught us how to eat, and, as pre-essential 
to it, how to roast, fry, and boil; and the lessons are of 
vital importance to our health and vigor as a people. 
Englishmen and Americans have too long regarded the art 
and mystery of cooking with contempt, as beneath the dig- 
nity of a cultivated, high-minded m-an. But good cookery 
is only another name for economy, health, temperance and 
longevity; and what can be more inconsistent than to 
require a diploma of the man who professes to cure the 
diseases caused by vile cookery, and to regard him as 
eminently respectable, and yet to allow quacks and em- 
pirics, — the most slovenly and uninstructed persons in 
the community, — to create them? 

That a man's energy, happiness, and even goodness, are 
dependent more or less upon his bodily condition, and con- 
sequently upon the condition of his stomach, few persons at 
this day will hesitate to admit. " A sound mind in a sound 
body " is a condition, not only of healthy intellectual, but 
of healthy spiritual life. Hippocrates went so far as to 
assert that all men are born with equal capacity, and that 
the mental differences in men are owing to the different 
kinds of foods they consume, a theory which was very 

159 



160 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 

plausibly illustrated by the late Mr. Buckle. A man of 
the kindliest impulses has only to feed upon indigestible 
food for a few days, and forthwith his liver is affected, and 
then his brain. His sensibilities are blunted; his uneasi- 
ness makes him waspish and fretful. He is like a hedge- 
hog with the quills rolled in, and will do and say things 
from which in health he would have recoiled. Dr. John- 
son said truly that " every man is a rascal when he is 
sick;" and Sydney Smith did not exaggerate when he 
affirmed that " old friendships are often destroyed by 
toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has often led to sui- 
cide.' 1 Who does not know that a nervous headache, an 
attack of dyspepsia, a rheumatic pain, even so trifling a 
thing as a cold in the head, will often convert the most 
amiable of men into a bull-dog? Even so intellectual a 
man as William Hazlitt, writing to his lady-love, could 
say: "I never love you so well as when I think of sit- 
ting down with you to dinner, on a boiled scrag-end of 
mutton and hot potatoes." The most blissful hours of 
domestic life are those most pervaded by the element of 
domesticity; and no prudent wife will despise the addi- 
tional charm added to the soothing effects of her presence 
by the influence of " a boiled scrag- end of mutton and hot 
potatoes.' 1 Who does not know that one of the secrets of 
begging favors successfully is to ask for them immediately 
after dinner. Many a man, who, before meal-time, would 
not give a sixpence for any purpose, will, post-prandially, 
talk with unction of the miseries of our race, and hand over 
his greenbacks without grumbling. The same person that 
at eleven o'clock a.m. repulsed a missionary with icy indif- 
ference, and almost laughed the world's conversion to 
scorn, will sing Heber's hymn with feeling, and almost 



THE MOEALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 161 

shed tears over the benighted condition of the Hottentots 
and Kickapoos, at three in the afternoon. Is there a lob- 
byist at Washington who is ignorant of the fact that his 
"little bill" is more clearly apprehended by a legislator 
after his one or two o'clock meal; or is there a wife who 
doubts that the way to a man's heart is through his stom- 
ach? "He had not dined," says Shakspeare of Coriolanus; 
and to the flatulence and acerbity thus caused in the hero's 
stomach Menenius ascribes his rejection of the prayers of 

Rome: 

"He had not dined; 
The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then 
We pout upon the morning, are unapt 
To give or to forgive; but when we have stuffed 
These pipes, and these conveyances of our blood, 
With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls 
Than in our priest-like fasts." 

The truth that man is half-animal has too often been 
ignored by divines and moralists. The health which is 
dependent upon a good digestion has much more to do with 
a man's piety than has generally been supposed. Every 
minister of the Gospel has to grapple with cases of con- 
science which baffle all ordinary spiritual treatment, and 
which turn out at last to be simply cases of physical dis- 
order whose remedy is in the pharmacopeia, or more fre- 
quently in the larder or cook-book. Constitutional, hered- 
itary, and occasional diseases are constantly at work, 
modifying men's opinions, feelings, and practices. Dr. 
Mason, of New York, used to say that the grace that 
would make John look like an angel, would be only just 
enough to keep Peter from knocking a man down. If 
the house of this tabernacle be shattered, and in constant 
need of props and repairs, its sympathetic tenant is apt 
to be like its crazy dwelling-place. There are only two 



162 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 

bad things in this world, said Hannah More, — sin and bile. 
Was she ignorant that a large part of the sin springs from 
bile? 

The doctrine that health has a great deal to do with 
godliness may not be very nattering to our pride; but 
we must accept our natures, as the transcendentalist did 
" the universe,' 1 and, accepting them, we must bow to the 
plain fact that a ladder reaching to Heaven must, if we are 
to climb it, have its feet upon the ground; and that, to 
reach to the highest degree of spiritual excellence, we must 
begin with physical and mental soundness. It is an in- 
dubitable truth that a man not only reasons better, but 
loves more warmly, gives more generously, and prays 
more fervently, when well than when ill. A man of 
unquestionable piety once said that he could not worship 
God until he had eaten his breakfast. It is equally true 
that a man who is well fed, clothed, and housed is a more 
amiable being than one who lacks the comforts of life. A 
man before dinner may talk scandal or write scathing 
criticism; may crawl like a horse-fly over the character or 
the writings of a neighbor; but, after he has well eaten 
and drunken, the thing is an impossibility. There is some- 
thing in a generous meal that exorcises the devils of 
disparagement and calumny, and substitutes therefor the 
spirits of good-fellowship and philanthropy. It may be 
doubted whether half of the suicides, murders, heresies, 
false philosophies, and apostacies that have stained the 
annals of our race, have not had their origin remotely in 
a disordered stomach. Voltaire affirms that the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew was primarily due to the utter inca- 
pacity of the King to digest his food. Had Josephine 
been a good cook, perhaps history might have been spared 



THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 163 

one of its saddest scandals. It is not the " fat, sleek- 
headed man," but the " lean and hungry Cassius " that is 
dangerous. 

As a moral institution, therefore, dinner cannot be too 
highly valued; but it has also its intellectual aspects. 
Even the literature of a nation, and its intellectual 
development generally, are more or less dependent on its 
cookery. It is easy to assert that the mind of an author 
should be independent of his physique, — that, being the 
nobler part of the man, it ought to rise superior to the 
trammels imposed on it by the body, or external influ- 
ences. Your stout, robustious persons, with nerves of 
whip-cord and frames of cast iron, cannot understand 
why the delicate, sensitive frame of the child of genius 
should be " servile to every skyey influence," as Shaks- 
peare calls it; or why a man who earns his bread and 
butter by scribbling on foolscap, should not be able to 
dash off Iliads, Divine Comedies, and Hamlets at all times 
and seasons, just as another man wields the broad-axe, 
handles the pitchfork, or shoves the jack-plane. It is, 
nevertheless, a stubborn fact with which literary men are 
only too familiar, that the flow and quality of a man's 
ideas may be affected by even such vulgar and common- 
place things as victuals. The elder Kean understood so 
well the physiological and psychological effects of diet, 
that he regularly adapted his dinner to his part; he ate 
pork when he had to play tyrants; beef for murderers; 
boiled mutton, for lovers. "Are you not afraid of com- 
mitting murder after such a meal?" inquired Byron of 
Moore, on seeing him occupied with an underdone beef- 
steak. Had Shakspeare lived on corned beef and cabbage, 
he might have produced the monster Caliban, but he 



164 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 

could never have conceived the delicate Ariel; and had 
Milton lived on pork and beans, ten chances to one he 
would have introduced the hog into his description of 
Paradise. M. Esquiros, an acute Spanish writer, in speak- 
ing of the English diet, expresses the opinion that beer, 
the national drink, has inspired the English poets, their 
artists, and their great actors:—" The English," he adds, 
" attribute to the use of this liquid the iron muscles of 
their laboring classes, who struggle so valiantly, afloat 
and ashore, in factories and vessels, for the power of 
Great Britain: they even attribute their victories to it. 
' Beer and wine,' an orator exclaimed at a meeting where 
I was present, 'met at Waterloo: wine red with fury, 
boiling over with enthusiasm, mad with audacity, rose 
thrice against that hill on which stood a wall of immov- 
able men, the sons of beer. You have read history: beer 
gained the day.' " 

Be this doctrine true, or the opposite, that " he who 
drinks beer thinks beer," the conclusion still follows that a 
man's thinking is more or less affected by his food. Some 
of the most anomalous events in history, including great 
political revolutions, have had their origin in the dis- 
ordered stomachs of kings and statesmen. The finest 
poets and prose writers that have charmed the world by 
their pens, have been mentally prostrated by a fit of 
indigestion; and generals who have proclaimed their pre- 
eminence at the cannon's mouth have" been rendered 
powerless by a badly-cooked dish. Could we know the 
full history of all victories, ancient and modern, we 
should probably be amazed to find how important a part 
in the destiny of Empires has been played by the gastric 
juice. The fears of the brave, as well as the follies of 



THE MOKALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 165 

the wise, may often be resolved into an overtaxed biliary 
duct. Napoleon lost a battle one day because his poulet a 
la Marengo was inconsiderably scorched by his chef-de- 
cuisine. Indigestion, caused by his fast and voracious mode 
of eating, paralyzed him in two of the most critical events 
of his life, — the battle of Borodino and the battle of Leip- 
sic, — which he might have converted into decisive and 
commanding victories had he pushed his advantages as he 
was wont. On the third day of Dresden, too, the German 
novelist, Hoffman, who was present in the town, asserts 
that the Emperor would have won far more brilliant suc- 
cesses but for the effects of a shoulder of mutton stuffed 
with onions. It was owing in a great degree to the 
wretched condition of their commissariat that the Aus- 
trians were defeated at Austerlitz. Cest la soupe qui fait 
le soldat. 

" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we may die," is 
a motto which has often been denounced, and most justly, 
by the Christian moralist. " Let us eat and drink well, 
lest to-morrow we die," would be a good substitute. 
The pleasures of the table are not the highest form of 
human enjoyment, it is true; but for all that, an oyster- 
pie is a good thing when well made. "A man," says Dr. 
Johnson, " who has no regard for his stomach, will have 
no regard for anything else." We fully agree with the 
great moralist, and we subscribe no less heartily to the 
saying of the French magistrate, of whom regenerated 
France, according to Royer-Collard, has so much reason 
to be proud,* who declared that the discovery of a new 
dish is more important than the discovery of a new star, 
because there never can be dishes enough, but there are 

* M. Henrion de Pensey, President of the Court of Cassation. 



166 THE MOKALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 

stars enough already. Justly did Talleyrand inveigh 
against the English, that they had one hundred and fifty 
forms of religion, and but one sauce, — melted butter. It 
is a mistake to suppose that only brainless men, with 
full paunches and empty pates, have a keen relish for 
the luxuries of the table, — that, as Shakspeare says, 

" Dainty bits 

Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt, quite the wits." 

The celebrated scholar, Dr. Parr, confessed a love for " hot 
lobsters, with a profusion of shrimp sauce." Pope was a 
decided epicure, and would lie in bed for days at Boling- 
broke's, unless he were told that there were stewed lam- 
preys for dinner, when he would rise instantly and hurry 
down to table. Cleopatra is said to have owed her empire 
over Csesar as much to her suppers as to her beauty; and 
who can tell how much the love of the Grand Monarque, 
Louis XIV, for Madame de Maintenon, was owing to the 
invention of the immortal cutlets which bear her name? 
Henry VIII was so grateful to the inventor of a dish whose 
flavor he relished, that he gave him a manor. Cardinal 
Wolsey was conciliated by the good dishes on the Field of 
the Cloth of Gold; and Agrippina won Claudius by a recipe 
for dressing Spanish onions. Handel ate enormously; and, 
when he dined at a tavern, always ordered dinner for three. 
On being told that all would be ready as soon as the com- 
pany should arrive, he would exclaim: "Den bring up de 
dinner, prestissimo. I am de company." 

It is said that Cambaceres, second consul under the 
French republic, and arch-chancellor under the empire, 
never, under any circumstances, suffered the cares of gov- 
ernment to distract his attention from "the great object 
of life," — a good dinner. Being detained, on one occasion, 



THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 167 

when consulting with Napoleon, beyond the appointed hour 
of dinner, he betrayed great symptoms of restlessness and 
impatience. At last he wrote a note, which he called a 
gentleman usher in waiting to carry. Napoleon, suspect- 
ing the contents, nodded to an aide-de-camp to intercept 
the despatch. As he took it, Cambaceres begged earnestly 
that his majesty would not read a trifling note on family 
matters. Napoleon persisted, and found it to be a note to 
the chancellor's cook, containing only these words: " Garclez 
les entremets, — les rotis sont perdus." 

It is sometimes said that "plain living and high think- 
ing" should be the motto of the scholar. The plain fact 
is, that, of all laborers, none more imperiously need a 
nutritious diet than the toilers with the brain. If there 
is any system of living which they should hold in horror, 
it is the bran-bread and pea-soup philosophy inculcated by 
Graham, Alcott and Co., and practised upon by nervous 
people, valetudinarians, and others, who are continually 
scheming how to spin out the thread of a miserable, sickly 
existence, after all their capacities of pleasure and enjoy- 
ment have passed away. These profound philosophers take 
special pains to show that there is nothing but disease 
lurking in all the delicacies of ocean, earth, and air, which 
Heaven has blessed us with. All the piquant dishes which 
lie so temptingly on the well-spread table, -to tickle the 
palate of the epicure, are, according to their view, impreg- 
nated with a subtle poison. One produces flatulency, 
another acidity; beef is stimulating, ham is bilious,*' pork 
is scrofulous, fish is indigestible, pastry is dyspeptic, tea 
is nervous; and so on, from the simplest article of diet 
to the most complicated effort of gastronomic skill. 

It is a little amusing that, while these ascetic philoso- 



168 THE MOEALITY OF GOOD LIVIHG. 

phers declaim so vehemently against the good things of this 
life, and predict an early grave for every man who makes a 
hearty, careless, miscellaneous meal, they are generally 
perfect amateurs in physic, and swallow all sorts of quack 
medicines and similar abominations with infinite relish. 
It is true that the theories of the bran-bread philosophers 
have received some countenance from a few distinguished 
writers, particularly Dr. Franklin and the poet Shelley, 
who seem to have thought that, by living wholly upon 
vegetable food, we may preserve our physical and intel- 
lectual faculties in a state of much higher perfection. But 
it is evident, in spite of such speculations, that man is a 
carnivorous animal, and must, once a day at least, be fed 
with flesh, fowl, or fish; he cannot make a satisfactory 
repast off the roots and fruits of the earth; for, though 

" His anatomical construction 

Bears vegetables in a grumbling sort of way, 
Yet certainly he thinks, beyond a question, 
Beef, veal, and mutton easier of digestion." 

Franklin, indeed, was not a very zealous convert to the 
Grahamite doctrines. He hesitated for some time what 
course to pursue, till, at last, recollecting that, when a cod 
had been opened, some small fish had been found in its 
stomach, he said to himself: " If you eat one another, I see 
no reason why we may not eat you." 

There was much good sense in the remark of a sainted 
Archbishop of York, who was very fond of roast goose, that 
so good a thing was not designed specially for sinners. 
Not less wise was the reply of Saint Thomas a Becket to a 
monk, who, seeing him eating a pheasant's wing with much 
relish, affected to be scandalized, saying that he thought 
Thomas a more mortified man. " Thou art but a ninny," 



THE MOEALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 169 

said the Archbishop; "knowest thou not that a man may 
be a glutton upon horse-beans • while another may enjoy with 
refinement even the wing of a pheasant, and have Nature's 
aid to enjoy what Heaven's bounty gave?" 

In advocating a due regard for the pleasures of the 
table, we commend no wanton profusion. There is a 
medium between the abstemiousness of the anchorite or the 
indifference of a Newton, who sometimes inquires whether 
he has dined, and the senseless profusion of a Csesar who 
devoured at a meal the revenue of several provinces, or of 
those other Eomans who had single dishes composed of five 
hundred nightingales' tongues, or the brains of as many 
peacocks. The dinners of a people, — their coarseness or 
refinement, their profusion or scantiness, — are an unerring 
index of the national life. There is, indeed, as another has 
said, a whole geological cycle of progressive civilization 
between the clammy dough out of which a statuette might 
be moulded, and the brittle films that melt upon the tongue 
like flakes of lukewarm snow. In the early years of the 
French Eevolution it was said to be impossible to under- 
stand that movement unless one dined at Barrere's. It is 
France that leads the rest of the world in civilization; and 
it is in France that the art of gastronomy has been carried 
to the last limit of perfection. In what other country did 
ever a maitre a" hotel stab himself to the heart because he 
could not survive the dishonor of his employer's table? 
Yet thus did Vatel, the cook of the great Conde, because on 
a great occasion the sea-fish failed to arrive some hours 
before it was to be served; thus showing, as Savarin has 
said, that the fanaticism of honor can exist in the kitchen 
as well as in the camp, and that the spit and the saucepan 
have also their Deciuses and their Catos. 
8 



170 THE MOKALITY OF GOOD LIVIKG. 

While giving due honor to the French, we must not 
forget that they were indebted to the Italians for the 
germinal ideas, the fundamental principles, of the great 
science of which they are the acknowledged masters. It 
was in Italy that the revival of cookery, as well as the 
revival of learning, first began; and from that country 
the science of gastronomy was introduced into the land* 
of Savarin and Soyer, by the artists that accompanied 
Catherine de Medicis. When Montaigne visited the land 
of Horace and Virgil, he was deeply impressed by the 
formal and weighty manner in which the cook in the 
service of Cardinal Caraffa spoke of the secrets of his art. 
" He discoursed to me," says the old Gascon, " of the 
de gueule with a gravity and magisterial air, as 
if he was speaking of some weighty point of theology." 

To conclude, the cook may not rank very high in the 
scale of humanity; but on the* other hand it requires 
no great stretch of imagination to foresee that, should 
ever the bran-bread system come in fashion, " living 
skeletons" would cease to be a wonder; Calvin Edsons 
would meet us at every corner; a man of eighty or ninety 
pounds would be a monster of corpulency; and, ere many 
centuries could elapse, the human species would gradually 
dwindle into nothingness, and vanish from the earth. 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 



TT is said that when in 1751 a bill was introduced into 
-■- the British Parliament for the reform of the calendar 
by passing at once from the 18th of February to the 1st of 
March, it met with fierce opposition. Lord Macclesfield, 
the President of the Royal Society, warmly advocated the 
bill ; and when three years afterward his son was a candi- 
date for Parliament in Oxfordshire, one of the most vehe- 
ment cries raised against him was, — " Give us back the 
eleven days we have been robbed of ! " When Mr. Brad- 
ley, the mathematician, another advocate of the bill, was 
dying of a lingering illness, the common people with one 
voice ascribed his sufferings to a judgment from Heaven 
for having taken part in that " impious undertaking." 

Something like this is the feeling of many persons in 
regard to the havoc made with their idols by modern his- 
torical criticism. One of the most painful moments in the 
experience of a student is when, after having spent years 
in acquiring a knowledge of the past, — in building pain- 
fully, brick by brick, an edifice of historical learning, — a 
doubt suggests itself whether the whole structure does not 
rest on sandy foundations. Beginning his researches with 
belief that " facts are stubborn things," or, as the Scotch 
poet has it, that 

''Facts are chiels that winna gang, 
And daurna be disputed." 

he too often ends with the melancholy conviction that 
" nothing is so fallacious as facts, except figures." That 

171 



172 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

compiled histories, like those of Hume and Gibbon, written 
by persons not concerned in the events, should abound in 
errors, is not strange; but it does startle us to be told that 
original memoirs, describing what men profess to have seen 
with their own eyes, or to have gathered from the lips of 
the actors themselves, are scarcely less likely to misrepre- 
sent the facts than derived history. If we may not implic- 
itly believe Robertson, Froude, and Macaulay, shall we not 
credit Clarendon, Burnett, and Sully? Yet modern inves- 
tigation has shown that in the latter class of writers falsi- 
fications, exaggerations, and distortions of fact, are nearly 
as frequent as in the former. 

Who is not familiar with the despairing exclamation of 
Sir Walter Raleigh, on vainly trying to get at the rights 
of a squabble which he had witnessed in the court-yard of 
the Tower, in which he was imprisoned? Two gentlemen 
had entered the room, and given him conflicting, and, as 
he thought, untrue accounts of the brawl. " Here am I," 
he cried, " employed in writing a History of the World, — 
trying to give a just account of transactions many of which 
occurred three thousand years ago, — when I cannot ascer- 
tain the truth of what happens under my window!" So 
the Duke of Sully tells us that, after the battle of Aumaule, 
Henry IV, being slightly wounded, conversed familiarly 
with some of his officers touching the perils of the day; 
"upon which, 1 ' says the Duke, "I observed, as something 
very extraordinary, that, amongst us all who were in the 
chamber, there were not two who agreed in the recital of 
the most particular circumstances of the action." 

Doubtless differences like these result from the different 
stand-points of the observers, just as two or more observers 
behold each a different rainbow, since the sun's rays are 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 173 

not reflected in the eyes of any two persons exactly in the 
same angle. Yet the rainbows are mainly the same, and 
so it may be with the differences of historians. But what 
if the discrepancies are essential, so as fundamentally to 
vary the whole statement? What if the witnesses are 
weak in intellect, dull of perception, dishonest, prejudiced, 
or deeply interested to give a lying account of the whole 
affair? Have we all of Caesar's blunders in his Commen- 
taries, — all of Napoleon's in his Memoirs? Who shall tell 
us of the true character of the Inquisition? Eead Prot- 
estant historians, and you see an engine of devilish cruelty; 
read De Maistre, and in an instant all history is upturned, 
and all your convictions subverted. You find it to be a 
mild and beneficent institution, founded upon the same 
rock of eternal truth and justice as martyrdom, love and 
heroic sacrifice. Who, again, shall tell us what was the 
real character of John Graham, of Claverhouse? How shall 
we decide between the two views which history presents to 
us, — on this panel, the butcher and the assassin; on that, 
the heroic leader, with a rare genius for war, — the politic 
and tolerant statesman, with a rare capacity for civil organ- 
ization? 

It may be thought that a historian living many ages 
after the events he portrays is guarded against error by 
the fact that he can judge calmly and philosophically of 
men and their acts; that he can sift the statements of con- 
temporary chroniclers, balancing one misstatement against 
another, and thus ascertain the precise amount of truth. 
But by what rule is he to decide among a variety of con- 
flicting statements? By what hair-balance is he to ascer- 
tain the exact amount of weight to be given to each? 
Knowing that, as Boileau says, " Le vrai rCest fas toujour s 



174 THE ILLUSION'S OF HISTORY. 

le vraisembldble^ that Truth often lacks verisimilitude, — 
shall he declare that to be true which looks the most prob- 
able? Again: is it quite certain that distance from the 
events guards the historian against prejudice? Is there 
not too much ground for the sarcasm of Rev. F. W. Rob- 
ertson, that history, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, 
is merely Mr. Hume's or Mr. Gibbon's theory, substantiated 
by a dry romance, until Mr. Somebody else comes and 
writes the romance in Ms way, the facts being pliable and 
equally available for both? 

What are Mitford's and Thirlwall's Histories of Greece 
but elaborate and disguised party pamphlets, demon- 
strating, the one aristocratical principles from Grecian 
history, the other democratical principles from precisely 
the same facts? Or what is Alison's History but Mr. 
Wordy 's account of the French Revolution, in twenty vol- 
umes, written to show that Providence was always on the 
side of the Tories? What Abbott's Life of Napoleon, but a 
demonstration from the very same facts that the hero of 
Austerlitz was a great philanthropist, who immolated self 
on the altar of humanity? What is Macaulay's so-called 
History but an ingenious and masterly piece of special 
pleading, designed to show that James II was a miscreant 
unworthy to live, while the asthmatic skeleton, his succes- 
sor, an obstinate, hard-headed, uninteresting Dutchman, 
with a bull-dog tenacity of purpose, had, like Berkeley, 
"every virtue under heaven? 11 Has not Mr. Froude 
shown that the facts of history are ductile, and can be 
manipulated so as to establish any desired theory, — even 
theories the most opposite? What, indeed, is the spirit of 
past ages, as preserved in most histories, " but the spirit, 11 
as Faust said to the student, " of this or that good gentle- 



THE ILLUSION'S OF HISTORY. 175 

man in whose mind those ages are reflected? 1 ' All the 
events of the past come to us through the minds of those 
who recorded them; and they, it is plain, are neither ma- 
chines nor angels, but fallible beings, with human passions 
and prejudices. Iron is iron in all its forms, but the sul- 
phate of iron will always differ from the carbonate of iron. 
Smith and Brown may be equally anxious to give us the 
facts of the past, without change or coloring; but the 
Smithate of history will, nevertheless, always differ from 
the Brownate of history. With the self-same facts, by 
skillful selection and suppression, "you may have your 
Hegel's philosophy of history, or you may have your 
Schlegel's philosophy of history; you may prove that the 
world is governed in detail by a special Providence, or you 
may prove that there is no sign of any moral agent in the 
universe, except man; you may prove that our fathers 
were wiser than we, or you may prove that they were 
fools; you may maintain that the evolution of humanity 
has been a ceaseless progress toward perfection, or you 
may maintain that there has been no progress, that the 
race has barely marked time; or, again, that men were 
purest in primeval simplicity, when 

'"Wild through the woods the noble savage ran.'" 

In days of old there were historians who avowedly 
wrote as they were bribed. It was said of Paulus Jovius 
that he kept a bank of lies. To those who paid him 
liberally he assigned a noble pedigree and illustrious 
deeds; those who gave nothing he vilified and blackened. 
He claimed that it was the historian's privilege to aggra- 
vate or extenuate faults, to magnify or depreciate virtues, 
— to dress the generous paymaster in gorgeous robes, 
and the miserly magnate in mean apparel. Many later 



176 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

historians, who would have scorned Jovius's fees, have 
not hesitated to copy his practices, — heightening the por- 
traits of some, and smearing the faces of others, as the 
Duchess of Marlborough, in a fit of rage, did the por- 
trait of her daughter, declaring that she was now as 
black without as within. 

What a tissue of falsification are many of the so-called 
histories of England! What lies have they perpetuated 
concerning the patriots of the Commonwealth and the age 
of Charles I ! So outrageously have they misrepresented 
the facts and the principles of those times, that even De 
Quincey, a churchman and a Tory, expresses his disgust, 
and affirms that the clergy of the Church of England 
have been in a perpetual conspiracy since the era of the 
Restoration to misrepresent both. "There is not a page 
of the national history, even in its local subdivisions, 
which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue of 
their wounded remembrances. 1 ' Of Cromwell's adminis- 
tration, the most glorious in English annals, they have 
given, he affirms, so mendacious a picture, that Conti- 
nental writers have actually believed that Oliver was a 
ferocious savage, who built his palace of human skulls, 
and that his major-generals of counties were so many 
Ali Pachas, who impaled or shot a dozen prisoners every 
morning before breakfast, or, rather, so many ogres that 
ate up good Christian men, women and children alive. 

Perhaps no historian ever piqued himself more on his 
judicial equanimity than David Hume. It was a favorite 
boast of his, that his first account of the Stuarts was 
free from all bias, and that he had held the balance be- 
tween Whig and Tory with a delicate and impartial 
hand. Yet, that his prejudices powerfully warped his 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOEY. 177 

mind, so as to render him altogether unsafe as a historian, 
few can doubt. Ten years after the first publication of 
his work, irritated by the outcry against him " for pre- 
suming," as he expresses it, " to shed a generous tear 
for the fate of Charles the First and the Earl of Stafford," 
he avenged the censure by recasting his historical ver- 
dicts, so as to render them offensive to the party that 
had attacked him. Among his intimate friends at Edin- 
burgh was an old Jesuit, who, like most of the order, 
was a scholar and a man of taste; and to his criticism, 
as the parts were finished, the MS. was submitted. Just 
after the publication of Elizabeth's reign, the priest 
chanced to turn over the pages, and was astonished to 
find on the printed page sins of the Scottish queen that 
had never sullied the written one. Mary's character was 
the exact reverse of what he had found it in the manu- 
script. Seeking the author, he asked the meaning of 
this. " Why," replied Hume, " the printer said he would 
lose £500 by that story; indeed, he almost refused to 
print it; so I was obliged to alter it as you saw." 

But what truth could be expected of a historian who 
wrote lying, — on a sofa? Nothing can surpass the ex- 
quisite ease and vivacity of Hume's narration; the charm 
of the style which Gibbon despaired of imitating, is fa- 
miliar to all. But the Scottish historian was too indo- 
lent to trouble himself about accuracy. Instead of 
applying his powerful critical faculty to sift truth out of 
tradition, he repeats legendary and half- mythological 
stories with the same air of belief as the well-authenti- 
cated events of modern times. Essentially a classicist of 
the Voltaire and Diderot school, he despised too heartily 
the barbarous monkish chroniclers to think of going 



178 THE ILLUSION'S OF HISTORY. 

through the drudgery of examining their writings, and 
winnowing the grains of fact they contain from the chaff 
of superstition and imaginative detail. We need not be 
surprised, therefore, that the searching investigation to 
which his history was subjected some years ago by George 
Brodie brought to light so many departures from truth, 
both wilful and unintentional. " Upon any question of 
fact" says De Quincey, himself, like Hume, a Tory, " Hume's 
authority is none at all." 

Even had Hume struggled against his indolence and 
his prejudices, there is one source of error which he 
could not have avoided. In condensing a narrative from 
the old chroniclers, and giving the pith of their state- 
ments in modern phraseology, the historian almost inva- 
riably gives us a new and different story. The events, 
characters, all the features of the time, undergo a kind 
of translation or paraphrase, which materially changes 
their character and gives a false impression to the reader, 
— an impression as false as that which Dryden has given 
of Chaucer by his attempts to modernize the old bard. 
Every one knows how completely the aroma, the bouquet 
of the old poet, — the sly grace of his language, — the 
exquisite tone of naivete, which, like the lispings of in- 
fancy, give such a charm to his verse, — have evaporated 
in the process of transfusion into more modern language. 
Words and ideas are so mystically connected, — so con- 
natural, — that the modernization of an old author is 
substantially a new book. It is not the putting of old 
thoughts into a new dress; it is the substitution of a 
new thought, more or less changed from the original 
type. Language is not the dress of thought; it is the 
incarnation of thought, and it controls both the physiog- 
nomy and the organization of the idea it utters. 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 179 

Even when Hume most unjustifiably perverts the truth 
of history, it is not usually by positively false statements. 
It is by suppression and exaggeration, — by gliding lightly 
over some parts, and scrutinizing others with microscopic 
eye and relentless severity, — that he commonly deceives 
the reader ; a process by which it is easy to make a saint 
of Charles I, or a tyrant of William III. In the same 
manner the author of " The Decline and Fall of the Ro- 
man Empire " has Gibbonized the vast tract over which 
he has traversed. Guizot and Milman have both com- 
pared Gibbon's work with the original authorities, and 
both, after the intensest scrutiny, pronounce him diligent 
and honest; but, as Mr. E. P. Whipple has "observed, this 
by no means proves that he gives us the real truth of 
men and events. The qualities of the historian's charac- 
ter steal out in every paragraph; and the reader who is 
magnetized by his genius rises from the perusal of the 
vast work, informed of nothing as it was in itself, but of 
everything as it appeared to Gibbon, and especially doubt- 
ing two things, — that there is any chastity in women, or 
any divine truth in Christianity. " He writes," says 
Macaulay, " like a man who had received some personal 
injury from Christianity, and wished to be revenged on 
it and all its professors." It is not, however, by what 
he expressly says, that he misleads the reader, but by 
what he hints and insinuates. Of all the writers who 
have " sapped a solemn creed " with irony, he is the 
most consummate master of the art of sneering. As 
Archbishop Whately has well said, " his way of writing 
reminds one of those persons who never dare look you 
full in the face." Never openly attacking Christianity, 
advancing no opinions which he might find it difficult to 



180 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

defend, he yet contrives to leave an impression adverse 
to the idea of its divine origin. Its rapid spread is ac- 
counted for by secondary causes, and the evidences upon 
which it rests are indirectly classed in the same category 
with the mythologies of paganism. Through two chap- 
ters an insidious poison is distilled, and yet, so skilfully 
is it mixed, that it would be difficult to put one's finger 
on a single passage which the historian could not defend 
as consistent with the faith of the most orthodox believer. 
" No man should write history, 1 ' says Montaigne, " who 
has not himself served the State in some civil or military 
capacity." By this is meant that only a man of action, one 
versed in affairs, can judge fairly the conduct of men of 
action, the man of books being almost sure to judge men 
according to some fanciful theory, which he has adopted in 
his chimney corner, of what they might and ought to be, 
and not practically, according to what they really are. 
Besides this, there is yet another source of error against 
which the most conscientious historian finds it difficult to 
guard. It is that which G-uizot calls the aptness to forget 
moral chronology, — to overlook the fact that history is 
essentially successive. " Take the life of any man," he 
observes, — " of Oliver Cromwell, of Cardinal Richelieu, of 
Gustavus Adolphus; he enters upon his career; he pushes 
forward in life, and rises; great circumstances act upon 
him ; he acts upon great circumstances. He arrives at the 
end of all things, and then it is we know him. But it is 
in his whole character; it is as a complete, finished piece; 
such in a manner as he is turned out, after a long labor, 
from the workshop of Providence. Now at his outset he 
was not what he thus became; he was not completed, not 
finished, at any single moment of his life; he was formed 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 181 

successively. Men are formed morally as they are phys- 
ically. They change every day. . . . The Cromwell of 1650 
was not the Cromwell of 1640. . . . This, nevertheless, is 
an error into which a great number of historians have fallen. 
When they have acquired a complete idea of a man, have 
settled his character, they see him in the same character 
throughout his whole career. With them it is the same 
Cromwell who enters Parliament in 1628, and who dies in 
the palace of Whitehall thirty years afterwards." Who can 
doubt that this mistake is a fruitful source of erroneous 
judgments? How often are public men, — especially 
usurpers and despots, — treated as if they had contem- 
plated at the outset of their career the goal which they 
reached at last! It has been well said that Cromwell 
followed little events before he ventured to govern great 
ones; and that Napoleon- never sighed for the sceptre 
until he gained the truncheon, nor dreamt of the imperial 
diadem until he had first conquered a crown. It is only 
by degrees that a man attains to the pinnacles of influence 
and power; and often none of those who gaze at the height 
to which he has risen are more astonished at his elevation 
than himself. 

That Macaulay succeeded better than Hume is doubtless 
true; but in some respects he signally failed. That he 
was far from being impartial, few, even of his admirers, 
will deny. He was a brilliant advocate, rather than a 
calm and discriminating judge. The most superficial 
reader cannot be blind to his more palpable prejudices, 
such as his intense dislike of the Quakers, — his almost 
bitter hatred of the Duke of Marlborough, which led him 
to paint his character in the blackest ink, — and his idolatry 
of William III, which led him to palliate all the king's 



182 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOEY. 

faults, even his faithlessness to his wife. But the historian 
had graver faults. To the height of the great argument 
of Puritanism he never rose. Cool, moderate, unenthusi- 
astic in temperament, his genius exactly fitted him to 
portray the reign of Queen Anne. The poets and the 
politicians of that age he could thoroughly gauge; and 
his picture of that brilliant group of versatile, witty, 
corrupt, and splendid gentlemen would have been drawn 
with a masterly hand. But his hand faltered when he had 
to register grander passions and darker conflicts. The 
world, as Macaulay viewed it, was a very commonplace 
world. He did not brood over the mysteries of being, 
like Carlyle. His idea of the universe was essentially a 
Parliamentary one; and men with him are mainly Whigs 
and Tories. Nothing can surpass his historical pictures 
in pomp and splendor; they are woven into a grand and 
imposing panorama, and every figure, too, is finished, down 
to the buttons and the finger nails. But it is the accidents, 
rather than the realities of things, that he paints. To use 
a scholastic phrase, he sees the qualities, not the quiddities, 
of men. He never gets to their core. The heroes of the 
Commonwealth, and their motives of action, — the spiritual 
pains, the stormy struggles, which tore England asunder 
in the seventeenth century, — he never comprehended. His 
plummet could not fathom them ; they lay beyond the reach 
of his even temperament and unimpassioned intellect, and 
set his measured antitheses at defiance. The strongest, 
richest, most unconventional, most original characters, 
become, when he touches them, comparatively insipid and 
tame. 

Macaulay's style, vivid, picturesque, and condensed, is 
almost perfect of its kind. His short, quick periods, it 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 183 

has been well said, faL upon the ear like the rapid firing 
of a well-served battery. But the very splendor of his 
style is often its chief fault. The temptation to write 
epigrammatically, — to employ strong contrasts, — some- 
times overmasters his judgment. He is too vehement and 
intense to be safe. There are whole pages in his history 
with hardly an adjective that is not super-superlative. 
The antithetical style, which by its salient contrasts is so 
well adapted to character-painting, does not lend itself 
readily, — at least when used in excess, — to the exact 
expression of facts. It is not strange, therefore, that even 
the most friendly critics of the Whig historian should have 
complained of his exaggeration. His characterizations are 
too extreme. He is always deepening the shadow and 
raising the light. To those he likes and to those he 
dislikes he gives more white and black than are due. 
Historical criticism with him was only a tribunal before 
which men were arraigned to be decisively tried by one or 
two inflexible tests, and then sent to join the sheep on the 
one hand, or the goats on the other. It is hard to believe 
that the hero of Blenheim, with all his avarice, was a 
moral monster, or that James II was a living contradiction 
because he risked his soul for the sake of his mistress, and 
risked his crown for the sake of his creed. Even when 
most dazzled by Macaulay's brilliant word-painting, we 
feel that we would gladly exchange the most martial-like 
epigram and the most glittering antithesis for a description 
which, tickling the fancy less, might be nearer the truth. 

Half of the lies of history have their origin in this 
desire to be brilliant, — to charm and surprise rather than 
to instruct. Historic truth is usually too complex, — too 
full of half-lights and faint shadows, — to admit of startling 



184 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

contrasts. The world is not peopled with angels and devils, 
but with men. To say that Robespierre was a " logic- 
formula, " with spectacles instead of eyes, and a cramp 
instead of a soul, as Carlyle has depicted him, and that, as 
he half suggests, if this "sea-green formula" had been 
sanguine and Danton bilious, there would have been no 
Reign of Terror, may be a vivid way of putting things; 
but we feel that the writer, in his effort to get below the 
husks and shells to the very souls of things, has falsified 
history as much by the excess of imagination as others by 
the lack of it. 

It has been justly said that in humanity there, is no 
such thing as a straight line or an unmixed color. You 
see the flesh color on the cheek of a portrait. The artist 
will tell you that the consummately-natural result was not 
attained by one wash of paint, but by the mixture and 
reduplication of a hundred tints, the play of myriad lights 
and shadows, no one of which is natural in itself, though 
the blending of the whole is. A man who lacks the historic 
instinct ignores all this. He seems to think that all moral 
distinctions are confounded, if Lucifer does not always wear 
a complete suit of black, and if there be a speck on 
Gabriel's wing. In painting his men and women, he 
assumes that they have but a few leading and consistent 
traits, and that these are always written in big and glaring 
type, like that employed by bill-stickers ; whereas, the fact 
is, that all men act more or less from inexplicable motives, 
and resemble in some degree the poet Edgar A. Poe, — at 
night the hero of a drunken debauch, in the morning a 
wizard of song whose weird and fitful music is like that 
of the sirens. 

"I believe that a philosopher," says Disraeli, "would 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 185 

consent to lose any poet to regain an historian. 1 ' No 
doubt, if the exchange were between a Massey and a 
Mommsen, a Tupper and a Tacitus; but what if the poet 
to be exchanged is a Homer or a Horace, a Shakspeare or 
a Milton? "Fancy," it is added, "may be supplied, but 
truth once lost in the annals of mankind leaves a chasm 
never to be filled.' 1 Unfortunately such a fancy as that 
of Dante or Milton cannot be made to order; it is the 
growth of centuries j while the truth of many "annals 11 
is purely imaginary. Even fiction itself is often more 
truthful than history. The creations of the great epic 
poets embody truths of universal application; and for a 
vivid and life-like picture of the civil wars of England, 
you must go, not to the stiff and stately pages of 
Clarendon, but to a romance of De Foe's, which Lord 
Chatham, deceived by its naturalness, once quoted as 
history. 

No one who has not compared the elegant and polished 
works of modern historians with the homely old chronicles 
on which they are based, would dream of the extent to 
which the facts have been tortured or metamorphosed. 
Not only are dry, naked facts amplified, so as to clothe 
the skeleton of history with flesh and blood, but chasms 
are filled up, and new facts added, to eke out the story, 
and make it more "sensational 11 ; while the entire narra- 
tion is often so clipped, and rounded off, and polished, 
that the original author, were he to rise from the dead, 
would not recognize his own offspring. These historians 
do as the wolf did with Baron Munchausen's horse, who 
began at the horse's tail, and ate into him, until the 
Baron drove home the wolf harnessed in the skin of the 
horse. It would be difficult to name a practice which 
8* 



186 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

has been more fatal to the trustworthiness of history than 
this of filling up the chasms in the historian's informa- 
tion with conjecture. A Cuvier, from a bone, may recon- 
struct an antediluvian animal; but it is not so with the 
writer, who, from a few isolated facts, tries to supply a 
missing chapter in a nation's history. In one case there 
is a correlation of the known and the unknown facts, a 
law of typical conformity, which makes it easy to supply 
those that are wanting; in the other there is no analogy, 
and we are left to our guesses. 

What shall we say of the latest historian of England, 
Mr. Froude? Few writers have recognized more fully than 
he, in theory at least, the difficulty, nay, impossibility, of 
being entirely just in our estimate of other ages. He con- 
fesses that in historical inquiries the most instructed 
thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most 
illiterate. Those who know the most, — whose investiga- 
tions are the profoundest, — approach least to agreement. 
In the eyes of Hume, he reminds us, the history of the 
Saxon Princes is " the scuffling of kites and crows." 
Father Newman, on the other' hand, would mortify the 
conceit of a degenerate England by pointing to the sixty 
saints and the hundred confessors who were trained in 
her royal palaces for the Calendar of the Blessed. How 
vast a chasm yawns between these two conceptions of the 
same era! "Again, the history of England scarcely inter- 
ests Mr. Macaulay before the Eevolution of 1788; and to 
Lord John Russell and Mr. Hallam the Reformation was 
the first outcome from centuries of folly and ferocity. 
Mr. Carlyle has studied the same subject with insight at 
least equal to theirs, and to him the greatness of English 
character was waning with the dawn of English literature. 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 187 

The race of heroes was already waning; the era of action 
was yielding before the era of speech. 1 ' Yet, in spite of 
these vivid examples of the difficulty of ascertaining the 
real facts of the past, and though Mr. Froude declares 
that he has been struck dumb with wonder at the facility 
with which men fill in gaps in their knowledge with 
guesses, — will pass their censures, as if all the secrets of 
the past lay out on an open scroll before them; and 
though he acknowledges that, ' wherever he has been 
fortunate enough to discover authentic explanations of 
English historical difficulties, he has rarely found any 
conjecture, either of his own or of any other modern 
writer, confirmed, yet even he, it seems, has not been 
able to avoid the errors of his predecessors; in his own 
words, " has not been able to leap from his shadow." He 
has been accused by able writers of making in his history 
partial and highly colored representations, of summarizing 
state papers in such a way as to read into them a mean- 
ing which does not exist in the originals; of throwing in 
words and phrases for which no equivalent can be found 
in the originals; of suppressing facts not suited to his 
theories; of dealing in innuendoes and exaggerations; and 
even of misquoting and entirely misrepresenting his 
authorities. 

Again, popular opinion and the so-called " dignity 
of history " too often compel the writer to subordinate 
faithfulness to impression. Agesilaus must not hobble, 
nor the neck of Augustus be awry. Hannibal must 
not be one-eyed, nor Marshal Vendome humpbacked; 
Suwarrow must be a giant in body as well as in intellect; 
Nelson, though dwarfish and lame, must stride the deck 
with the body, as well as the soul, of a hero; Washington 



188 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

must always spell correctly, call "Old Put" General Put- 
nam, and never swear, and never pitch an offending 
servant out of a window; and all the facts must lose 
their ugliness or grotesqueness, and have the smoothly 
clipped uniformity of a Dutch ewe-tree. 

Another of the banes of history is the necessity of find- 
ing out causes of sufficient dignity for its leading events. 
Half of the great movements in the world are brought 
about by means far more insignificant than a Helen's 
beauty or an Achilles' wrath. A grain more of sand, 
thought Pascal, in the brain of Cromwell, — one more 
pang of doubt in the tossed and wavering soul of Luther, 
— and the current of the world's history would have been 
changed. Who can conjecture what that history would 
have been, had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, — had the 
spider not woven its web across the cave in which Ma- 
homet took refuge, — had Luther's friend escaped the 
thunderstorm, — had the Genoese, after the peace of 
Paris, not sold the petty island of Corsica to France? 
Accidents, too, mere accidents, — the bullet which struck 
Gustavus on the field of Liitzen, — the chance by which 
the Russian lancers missed Napoleon in the churchyard 
of Eylan, — the chance which stopped Louis XVI in his 
flight at Varennes, — the death of Elizabeth of Russia, 
which, in the hour of Frederic the Great's despair, when 
he was almost overwhelmed by his enemies, broke the 
powerful combination against him, — turn the course of 
history as well as of life, changing alike the destinies of 
nations and of men. Sallust says that a periwinkle led 
to the capture of Gibraltar. "A chambermaid," wrote 
Chesterfield to his son, " has often made a revolution in 
palaces, which was followed by political revolution in 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 189 

kingdoms; the subtlest diplomacy has sometimes been 
interrupted by a cough or a sneeze." Causes like these, 
which the sensational writer is fond of assigning, seem 
inadequate and disproportionate to the grave historian; 
and so he hunts about for weightier ones. He cannot 
believe that the expedition of Henry of Guise, who went 
in a herring-boat and made himself King of Naples, was 
merely the frolic of a hair-brained youth; and he deems 
it necessary to show a long train of important circum- 
stances leading to the expedition. 

Who, again, is not familiar with the rehabilitations of 
historical villains, which have become so fashionable with 
recent historians? Special monarchs or statesmen having 
been selected, whose pilloried bodies have been for cen- 
turies the favorite target for filth of every description, 
they have been subjected to a scrubbing process, by which 
all their vilest sins have been rubbed off them. Not 
only has Eichard III been " reconstructed, 1 ' so as to lose 
both his physical and his moral hump; not only has the 
Bluebeard of British history, Henry VIII, been trans- 
formed into almost a model husband, whose only fault 
was excessive uxoriousness ; not only has "bloody Mary" 
lost nearly all her blood, except that running in her 
own veins; not only has Catiline, whom in our school-boy 
days we learned so to execrate, been whitewashed into 
a much-abused patriot; but even the bloody Borgias have 
been bleached; the Duke of Alva has been metamorphosed 
from a cruel and cold-blooded bigot into a '• cool, mod- 
erate, far-seeing statesman"; Catherine de Medicis has 
been whitened; and Nero himself, the synonym of cruelty, 
will doubtless be proved to have been outrageously slan- 
dered; and some Froude or Niebuhr will yet show that, 



190 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

when he fiddled while Rome was burning, he was only 
playing some " Dead March in Saul," or other funereal 
strain, as a safety-valve to his agonized feelings! But 
pray tell us, — if the verdicts of the past are to be thus 
unsettled, and this process is to go on till all the " crook- 
backed tyrants " of history shall have been physically and 
morally straightened, and its pages purified from all cut- 
throats, — as if our historians had resolved to imitate 
Canning's nice judge, who 

" Swore, with keen, discriminating sight, 
Black's not so black, nor white so very white," 

— how shall we know when the real truth, the "hard 
pan" of past events, has been reached, and that History, 
now so changeful, has made her final and irreversible 
statement, which shall render her worthy of her proud 
boast that she is "philosophy teaching by examples"? 

Perhaps in the next generation the fashion will have 
changed to the opposite point of the compass. We may 
start with a hero, and conclude with a Nero ; we 
may begin with a saint, and end with a scamp. Indeed, 
the disenchanting process has already begun. Have not 
the German moles, who have been burrowing in the 
Eternal Gity among its old manuscripts and tombstones, 
shown by a dull realistic philosophy that all its early 
history is a myth? Have they not squeezed the breath 
out of Romulus and Remus, and shown that the wolf- 
suckling story, which so charmed our boyhood, is a fable? 
Has not the famous conspiracy of the Sicilian vespers, 
which for ages has been the theme of song and story, — 
which has inflamed the imagination of all civilized na- 
tions through the dreams and embellishments of the nov- 
elist and the dramatist, — been lately shown to be no 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 191 

conspiracy at all? Has not Mr. Aaron Goodrich, of Min- 
nesota, just sought to sap our faith in Columbus by 
showing that he was a pirate, whose true name was 
Griego — that he got all his ideas of the New World 
from the Northmen and some shipwrecked Venetian sailors, 
who had discovered the American coast, — that he meanly 
claimed of Queen Isabella the reward of discovery, though 
one of his sailors in another vessel had first descried 
the land, and he had again and again been ready to give 
up the expedition in despair? Has not Mr. John Pym 
Yeatman just demonstrated, — to his own satisfaction, at 
least, — that the Normans never conquered England, but 
only came down from the mountains and from Brittany, 
and retook what was their own before? Have not Innes 
and Pinkerton cut out eight centuries from the history 
of Scotland, and, crueller still, knocked in the head 
fifty of her kings? Are we not told that Dion Cassius 
painted every man whom he disliked as black as Erebus, 
and that Suidas was accustomed " to invent a horrid 
death' 1 for those whose doctrines he hated? 

Have not the historical critics of Germany shown that 
the notion which so kindled our youthful enthusiasm, 
that Brutus stabbed Caesar from patriotic motives, is an 
illusion, — that the actual fact was, that, it being the 
custom in old Rome for the nobles to lend money to the 
plebeians at fearfully usurious rates, Caesar forbade this 
by a law, and was immediately afterwards butchered by 
the "noble" Brutus and his fellow conspirators; and that 
consequently all Akenside's fine poetry about B'rutus's 
rising " refulgent from the stroke," is mere poetry, and 
nothing more ? Have not Monsieur Dasent and Mr. Baring- 
Gould annihilated William Tell and his apple, by show- 



192 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

ing that no mention of them was made in Switzerland 
till about two centuries after Tell's supposed time, and 
that the story is common to the whole Aryan race, as 
well as to the Turks and Mongols, who never heard of 
Tell, or saw a book in their lives? Has not England's 
patron saint been proved to be a low impostor, who got 
rich by fraud, theft, and the arts of a common informer, 
— turned religious adventurer, bribed his way to a bish- 
opric, and, at last, upon being imprisoned for his crimes, 
was dragged out of jail, and lynched by an angry mob? 
Are we not all too familiar with the story of Amerigo 
Vespucchi, the pickle-dealer at Seville, who, though but 
a boatswain's mate in an expedition that never sailed, 
contrived to supplant Columbus, and to baptize half the 
earth with his own dishonest name? 

Has any other department of history been so deluged 
with lies as that of saintly biography? Not to dwell 
upon the counterfeits and fabrications in mediaeval and 
later literature, which the monks spent their leisure 
in making, — have we no brummagem saints in modern 
times? What American that has visited London has not 
learned to honor the name of Thomas Guy, who founded 
Guy's hospital, who gave away fabulous sums for benev- 
olent purposes, and whose name stares at us in stone 
in sundry statues? Yet who and what was this Guy, 
when stripped of all his guises? Alas! for those who 
believe that the great secret of happiness is to preserve 
our illusions, this world-renowned philanthropist, whom 
the poor, crippled sailor so idolizes, was, if we may be- 
lieve certain English writers, a clever stock-jobber, a 
miser, and a man who absolutely fattened on the wrongs 
of the poor cheated Jack Tars! At one time the English 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 193 

sailors were paid, not in gold, but in paper, as inconvert- 
ible as our greenbacks. With these they were often 
forced to part at any discount which the money-changers 
chose to exact. The good Guy bought these tickets, and 
out of the profits became a millionaire. 

Shall we add to all these instances of men whom history 
or biography has canonized, that of Sallust, denouncing in 
his elegant pages, with burning anger, the corruption of 
Rome and the extortion in its provinces, yet establishing 
his famous museum-gardens " with the gold and the tears 
of Numidia;" Pope Gregory VII, the haughtiest of pon- 
tiffs, entitling himself " the servant of the servants of God," 
at the very time when he expected that kings and emperors 
should kiss his toe and hold his stirrup; Francis I, the 
pink of chivalry, threatening to stab himself rather than 
sign a dishonorable treaty, and, on signing a treaty, de- 
claring secretly to his counsellors his intention, on a mis- 
erable pretext, of breaking it; Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
invoking parental care for infancy, and sending his own 
children to a foundling hospital; Lord Bacon, holding 
with one hand the scales of justice, and with the other 
taking bribes ; the great Duke of Marlborough, now acting- 
history in minutes, and now dirtying his hands by pecula- 
tion in army contracts, — the politest of men and the mean- 
est; Lord Peterborough, the hero of Barcelona and the 
amateur cook, walking from market in his blue ribbon, 
with a fowl under one arm and a cabbage under the other; 
Algernon Sydney, one moment mouthing patriotism, and 
at another accepting bribes from France; the sentimental 
Sterne, weeping over a dead ass, and neglecting a living 
mother; Sheridan, firing off in the House of Commons 
impromptu jokes kept in pickle for months; the poet 



19-1: THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

Young, spending his best days in toadying and place- 
hunting, and in old age satirizing the pursuits in which 
he had failed, — draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs, 
and then turning State's-evidence against the world and 
its follies? 

Shall we speak of the poet Thomson, singing the praises 
of early rising, and lying abed till noon; Woodworth, sing- 
ing in his " Old Oaken Bucket " the praises of cold water, 
under the inspiration of brandy; Dr. Johnson, in his dic- 
tionary, denning pension as " pay given to a state hireling 
for treason to his country," and afterwards accepting from 
George III. a pension for himself; William Cobbett, de- 
nouncing the House of Commons as "a Den of Thieves,' 1 
and afterwards putting himself forward as a candidate for 
admission into this thieving fraternity, and proudly taking 
his place as one of its members; Byron, dining at Rogers's 
on a potato and a little vinegar, and secretly stuffing like 
an anaconda, — sending £4,000 to Greece, and writing pri- 
vately to a friend that " he did not see Jiotr lie could well 
hare got off for less" — or sending a copy of his famous 
" Fare-thee-well " verses to Lady Byron, with a butcher's 
bill inclosed, with a slip like this, " I don't think we could 
have had so much meat as this;" George I, gaining by act 
of Parliament a crown to which he had no hereditary title. 
yet in his very first speech to that body talking of " ascend- 
ing the throne of his ancestors"? But England (as some 
of our examples have shown) has no monopoly of what one 
of her writers has called " these humiliating humbugs of 
history;" we have but to cross the channel to find among 
her glory-loving neighbors others worthy to rank with a 
note-shaving Brutus, patriotic from private spite, or a 
Thomas Guy, ostentatiously giving to the seamen with one 
hand what he had squeezed out of them with the other. 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 195 

" History," wrote Voltaire to a friend, "is, after all, 
nothing but a parcel of tricks we play with the dead." . . . 
"As for the portraits of men, they are nearly all the cre- 
ations of fancy; 'tis a monstrous piece of charlatanry to 
pretend to paint a personage with whom you have never 
lived. 1 ' Did the French historians think of this when they 
told the story of the Vengeur? Riddled in the sea-fight of 
June 1, 1794, by three English ships, the Vengeur, they 
tell us, began to fill. Her crew fought her lower tier of 
guns till the rising water poured forth through the ports; 
then, running to the next tier, they fired its guns till again 
the water drove them off. Then they took to the deck 
guns; and, at last, grouping, with arms stretched to 
heaven, and shouting Vive la Bepublique ! their colors still 
flying, and pr.eferant la mort a la captivite, they went 
down, the waters rolled over them, and all was over! 

All this is very magnifique, and many a Frenchman's 
heart swelled as he thought that these men were his coun- 
trymen, till unfortunately, a letter of the French captain, 
written on the ship to which he had surrendered, was dis- 
covered, showing that the Vengeur had struck her colors, 
that her crew shrieked for help, that her captain and a 
good part of her men were taken from her, that she sank 
as a British prize, and that a British prize-crew went down 
with her. Notwithstanding these facts, Thackeray saw in 
the Louvre, in 1841, a great painting representing the 
Vengeur going down with colors flying, and fired upon by 
the British sailors in red coats; and now, to save the na- 
tional honor, which is so much dearer than truth, the 
French captain's official letter is pronounced a forgery!* 

* Admiral Griffiths, one of the survivors of the engagement, who was 
living in 1838, declares the French story to be "a ridiculous piece of non- 
sense." "Never," he says, "were men in distress more ready to save them- 
selves." There was "not one shout beyond that of horror and despair." 



196 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

Perhaps this method of getting rid of the facts was sug- 
gested to the French by the irony of Dean Swift: "I have 
always," says the Dean, " borne that laudable partiality to 
my own country which Dionysius Halicarnassus with so 
much justice recommends to an historian. I would hide 
the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and 
place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous 
light." 

Passing from the sea to the land, who has not read the 
glorious tale of the chivalry of Fontenoy? — how two 
regiments, French and English, approached on the hill, 
and the officers rode out from each front, bowing and 
doffing hats, while the gallant Hay cried, " Gentlemen of 
the French Guards, will you please to fire first ?" — to 
which the Count d'Auteroche responds: "We never fire 
first." Now what were the facts? Few persons have 
read them, as stated by Carlyle in his Life of Fred- 
eric the Great, that the bowing was mockery, the polite 
speeches huzzahs, the chivalry mere " chaffing," and that 
the French did fire first, and that, too. without standing on 
the order of firing, but immediately on catching sight of 
the English, and without even waiting to say, k " By your 
leave.' 1 

Leaving France, and coming nearer home, need we 
cite Commissioner Oulds' defence of Wirz, the pious jailor 
of Andersonville ; how he proved him to be a hero of the 
noblest type, whose only foible was an excess of tenderness, 
and gave as a reason for this revelation " a desire to 
vindicate the truth of history"? Are we not all familiar 
with the thrilling story of Farragut, who, at the battle 
of Mobile Bay, lashed himself to the mast-head of his 
battle-scarred flagship, and thence signalled to his fleet 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOEY. 197 

as lie sailed by Forts Gaines and Morgan vomiting flame? 
The simple fact is, that the Admiral was not at the mast- 
head, — was not lashed, — did not go aloft to encourage his 
men or to signal from his position, but simply stepped 
into the main rigging to get a good view of the situa- 
tion, as sings Mr. T. Buchanan Read: 

" High in the mizzen-shroud, 

(Lest the smoke his sight o'erwhelm,) 
Our Admiral's voice rang, loud,— 
'Hard a-starboard your helm!'" 

And again: 

" From the main-top, bold and brief. 

Came the word of our grand old chief,— 
'Go on!' 'Twas all he said, 
And the Hartford passed ahead. 

So hard is it to get the facts touching what is going on 
to-day, and almost before our very eyes ! " It is prob- 
able," says an able Scottish writer, " that not one fact in 
the whole range of history, original and derived, is truly 
stated." * 

Had we space, it would not be difficult to show that 
many of the most striking incidents of history, — scenes 
and events which artists have been fond of depicting, and 
orators of citing, — are pure fiction. Such are the stories 
of Xerxes flogging the Hellespont, — that his army num- 
bered five millions, and drank whole rivers dry: that' three 
hundred Spartans checked his career at Thermopylae, 
when, in fact, they numbered over seven thousand; that 
Virginia perished by her father's hand; that Omar burned ' 
the Alexandrian library; and that Wellington at Waterloo 
took refuge in a square: while grave doubts have assailed 
the storv of Cleopatra's dying by the asp's sting, that of 

* For most of the facts and citations in the last three pages, the author 
in indebted to a writer in the N. Y. "Galaxy." 



198 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

Canute commanding the waves to roll back, and that of 
Charles IX firing on the Huguenots from a window of the 
Louvre during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Who is 
not familiar with the touching story of St. Pierre and his 
companions delivering up the keys of Calais to Edward III, 
with halters round their necks, and having their lives 
spared at the intercession of the Queen? Hume discredited 
it; it was shown by a French antiquary in 1835 to be 
unfounded; and now a later French writer points to docu- 
mentary proof that St. Pierre was in collusion with the 
besiegers, and was pensioned by the English King. Who, 
again, has not heard the popular story of the origin of the 
Order of the Garter, — that it was owing to the accident 
that happened to the Countess of Salisbury, when dancing 
at the court of Edward III? It may be true; but the first 
mention made of it is by Polydore Virgil, who wrote two 
hundred years later. What historical tableau has been 
more deeply impressed on the public mind than the part- 
ing of Louis XVI from his family? The scene has been 
described in prose and verse, and portrayed in pictures of 
all sizes, yet never occurred. It is true the Queen wished, 
with the children, to see the King on the morning of his 
execution, and he consented; but he subsequently requested 
that they might not be permitted to return, as their 
presence too deeply affected him. 

Again: what Napoleon-worshipping disciple of Headley 
or Abbott ever dreams of doubting that the hero of Lodi 
and Austerlitz really did scale the Alps on a fiery, high- 
mettled charger, with ;t neck clothed with thunder, 1 ' as 
David, the French artist, has painted him? But let us 
hear the great Corsican himself: " The First Consul 
mounted, at the worst part of the ascent, the mule of 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 199 

an inhabitant of St. Peter, selected by the prior of the 
convent as the surest-footed mule of that country." Such 
is the difference between reality and painting, truth and 
declamation. Again and again has it been denied by 
historical critics that the Russians burned Moscow to pre- 
vent Napoleon from making it his winter-quarters ; and 
in vain do they assert what Mr. Douglas, at one time our 
minister to Russia, has confirmed, that hardly more than 
the suburbs, where the French' were quartered, were set 
on fire, to cover the Russian attack. Maelzels and other 
showmen still renew the infandum dolorem of the confla- 
gration in paintings and panoramas. 

So long as biography is written, or an essayist loves 
to point his moral with an anecdote, we shall hear the 
story of Newton and his dog Diamond, which destroyed the 
papers which the philosopher set himself so patiently to 
rewrite: and that he cut two holes in his study door for 
his cat and kitten to go out and in, a big hole for the 
cat, and a small hole for the kitten, — albeit both stories 
are myths, since neither purring puss nor sprightly poodle 
were allowed within the precincts of the mathematician's 
thought-hallowed rooms. But the apple, — the falling of 
the apple? Surely, the lynx-eyed critics of history, who 
have cheated us out of so many pleasing illusions, will 
not rob us of that? In one sense, it is of little conse- 
quence whether the story be true or false. Unless 
observed by a mind already so prepared to make the 
discovery that any falling body would have started the 
proper train of ideas, the falling of ten thousand apples 
would have led to no discovery of gravitation. But what 
are the facts? We have, for the story, the authority of 
several of Newton's friends, and the opinion of M. Biot, 



200 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. . 

the eminent French savant, after a scrutiny of all the 
facts in the case; yet Sir David Brewster, who, in the 
first edition of his biography, declared his disbelief of the 
story, sticks still to his incredulity; and rhetoricians must 
still refer, with less confidence than eloquent effect, to 
" Newton and the falling apple." 

It is popularly believed that Milton, in his blindness, 
dictated his immortal epic to his daughters, and a British 
painter has depicted the scene; though Dr. Johnson, in 
his life of the poet, declares that he would not suffer 
them to learn to write. The story that the Duke of 
Clarence was drowned, at his own request, in a butt of 
Malmsey, is still repeated in popular compilations of his- 
tory; and the Right Hon. J. W. Croker, in a book for 
children, has had the incident illustrated by a wood-cut. 
The only foundation for the story, according to a historian 
of the Tower of London, is the well-known fondness of 
Clarence for Malmsey. " Whoever," says Sir Horace Wal- 
pole, " can believe that a butt of wine was the engine of 
his death, may believe that Richard (the Third) helped him 
into it, and kept him down till he was suffocated." 

Till recently it was generally believed that Britain 
exchanged the name it had borne for more than a thou- 
sand years, for the new one of Anglia, or England, in 
the reign of Egbert, king of Wessex. A Witanegemot, 
or Parliament, the old chronicler tells us, was held at 
Winchester, A.D. 800, and then and there the change was 
made. But now comes Francis Palgrave with his " His- 
tory of the Anglo-Saxons," and declares that the first nine 
years of Egbert's reign are a void in all the authentic 
chronicles, that the country "was not denominated Eng- 
land till a much later period," and that " the Parliament . 
of England is a pure fable." 



THE ILLUSION'S OP HISTORY. 201 

Among the stories of travelers which have been re- 
peated again and again in histories, geographies, and Sun- 
day-School books, none is more familiar to men in 
Christian lands than the account of " Juggernaut," the 
hideous idol under the wheels of whose car the deluded 
heathen of India have been supposed to throw themselves, 
with the hope of winning heaven by their self-sacrifice. 
According to the latest and highest authorities* on the 
subject, the popular belief on this latter point, so deeply 
rooted in childhood, and made vivid by wood-cuts, rests 
upon an entire misapprehension of the facts. " Juger- 
nath," or rather " Jagernath," means simply "the Lord 
of Life " ; self-immolation is utterly opposed to the spirit 
of his worship; and the poor wretches who have been 
supposed to court death by the idol, were simply invol- 
untary victims, who, among the multitudes that crowded 
round the rope to pull, fell, in the excitement, under 
the wheels and were crushed. 

It is said that a famous Hebrew commentator, having 
determined to write a work on Ezekiel, bargained, before 
he began his book, for a supply of 300 tons of oil. Were 
any writer to attempt the giant task of disabusing the 
world of all its. historical illusions, he would need, we 
fear, not only tons of midnight oil, but an extra pair of 
brains and hands, and a lease of lives " renewable for 
ever." Among the grand and impressive incidents of 
history, none are more interesting than the mots, or 
striking expressions, which have dropped on memorable 
occasions from the mouths of great men. These, being 
brief, and so pungent as to stick like burrs in the mem- 

* t; Orissa," by Dr. N. W. Hunter, and wt Ten Great Religions," by Rev. 
J. G. Clarke. 



202 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

ory, one might suppose to have been accurately caught 
and reported by history. Yet, probably, not one in a 
hundred of these famous sayings was ever uttered, — at 
least, as reported, — by the men with whose names they 
are labelled. The fact is, the vast majority of these 
pungent anecdotes have received their point in the man- 
ufactory of the wit. 

So long as the star-spangled banner continues to wave, 
and heroism to be admired, Americans will continue to 
believe that General Taylor at the crisis of Buena Vista 
called out, "A little more grape, Captain Bragg"; and 
equally impossible will it be to make them disbelieve 
that General Jackson fought at New Orleans behind breast- 
works of cotton. Yet Captain Bragg asserts that the 
" little more grape," like the schoolboy's whistle, produced 
itself, — in other words, is a poetic fiction; and "Old 
Hickory " always denied the truth of the cotton bale 
story, which certainly rather detracts from, than adds to, 
his glory. The only foundation for it was the fact that 
a few bales of cotton goods were flung into the breast- 
work, forming but an insignificant part of the material. 
Again: how often on the anniversary of the battle of 
New Orleans are we reminded of the famous cry of the 
British soldiers, viz.: "Beauty and Booty," though it has 
been declared by every surviving officer of that battle to 
be a fiction. Perhaps no hero of ancient or modern 
times has been credited with so many grand and even 
sublime utterances which he never uttered, as Lord Nel- 
son. In Southey's admirable life of the hero, it is related 
that, when, going into the battle of the Nile, Captain 
Berry, Nelson's second in command, was told of the plan 
and its probable results, he exclaimed with transport, 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 203 

"If we succeed, what will the world say?" "There is 
no if in the case/' replied Nelson; " that we shall suc- 
ceed, is certain. Who may live to tell the story, is a 
very different question." Mr. Massey quotes the anecdote 
in his history of the reign of George IV, and adds: "We 
are assured, on the authority of Captain Berry himself, 
that no such scene took place." 

Again: who has not admired the simple majesty of 
the sentiment expressed in the order of Nelson at Trafal- 
gar, which has so often been the battle-cry of Britannia's 
sons on sea and land: "England expects every man to do 
his duty 11 ? Yet the real order was, "Nelson expects 
every man to do his duty," for which the former was 
ingeniously substituted by the officer whose business it 
was to telegraph the order to the fleet, simply because 
he could find no flag by which to telegraph the word 
Nelson. Once more, — whose soul has not been thrilled 
by the sublime sentiment of the reply with which the 
same hero is said to have silenced the affectionate impor- 
tunities of his officers, when they entreated him to con- 
ceal the stars on his breast at the same battle: "In 
honor I gained them, and in honor I will die with them! '■' 
History has recorded few nobler sentiments, than which 
Tacitus could not have put a finer into the mouth of 
Agricola. But its merit is purely imaginative. The facts 
are, as Dr. Arnold gathered them from Sir Thomas 
Hardy, that Nelson wore on the day of battle the same 
coat which he had worn for weeks, having the Order of 
the Bath embroidered on it; and when his friends ex- 
pressed some fears regarding the danger, Nelson answered 
that he was aware of the danger, but that it was " too 
late then to shift a coat." 



204 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

"Up, Guards, and at them!" men will always believe 
to have been the exclamation of Wellington, while they 
thrill at the story of Waterloo, in spite of the Duke's 
protest that he uttered no such nonsense; and just as 
implicitly will they believe the tallying statement, that 
the captain of the Imperial Guards uttered the bravado, 
" La yarde meurt, et ne se reride pas!" — which is purely 
a myth, albeit so dramatically introduced by Victor Hugo 
in his picture of the battle in Les Mi se rabies, and in- 
scribed, too, on the monument at Nantes. The last 
bombastic phrase was a pure invention of a French jour- 
nalist two days after the battle. On the authority of 
Lamartine, every Frenchman religiously believes that 
Wellington in that terrible fight had seven horses killed 
under him, though it is well known in England that 
Copenhagen, the one horse that bore him through the day, 
escaped the murderous bullets, and died "in a green old 
age " at Strathfieldsaye. If we may believe the same 
poetic writer, the French were not beaten at Waterloo; 
they simply left the field in disgust. The splendid irony 
of Alexandre Dumas's compliment to the author of the 
"History of the Girondins 1 ' has rarely been surpassed. 
Meeting Dumas soon after the publication of that work, 
Lamartine inquired anxiously of the great romancer, if 
he had read it. " Out; cest superbe! Cest de Vhistoire 
elevee a la hauteur du rouiau."' 

A less memorable French mot than that invented for 
the commander of the Imperial Guard, is the cry of 
Philip of Valois, when, flying from the battle of Crecy, 
he arrived before the closed gates of the Castle of Braye, 
and exclaimed: " Ouvrez, oimrez, c'est la fortune de la 
France, — Open, open to the fortunes of France." Turn- 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 205 

ing to Froissart, the original source of the anecdote, we 
find — what? Instead of the fine sentiment we have quoted, 
by which the king embodies in himself the stricken for- 
tunes of his country, only the tame exclamation, " Ouvrez, 
ouvrez, c'est Vinfortune Roi de la France, — Open, open; 
'tis the unfortunate King of France." Will any one who 
knows the intensity of a Frenchman's love for dramatic 
" effects," be surprised to learn that Chateaubriand, that 
splendide mendax writer, having misrelated this story in 
his History of France, refused, on being informed of his 
error, to correct it? Or is it strange that, with the same 
noble scorn for strict accuracy, and exclusive regard for 
artistic effect, Voltaire, on being asked where he found a 
certain startling "fact," in one of his histories, replied: 
"It is a frolic of my imagination?" For three centu- 
ries, historians have delighted to repeat the heroic senti- 
ment expressed by Francis I, when writing to his mother 
from the battle-field of Pavia: "All is lost but honor" 
(Tout est perdu fors Vhonneur). But how runs the letter 
which the King actually wrote on the occasion, and which 
has been preserved? Instead of the pithy, epigrammatic 
communication, as terse as a telegram, which Francis is 
said to have despatched from the battle-field, and which 
so electrifies the reader as the grand outburst of a regal 
spirit in sudden adversity, it turns out that the French 
monarch wrote in prison, by permission, a long letter, in 
which, after describing the battle, he says, prosaically: 
" With regard to the remaining details of my misfortune, 
honor, and life, which is safe, (Vhonneur et la vie qui est 
saulve,) are all that are left to me," etc., etc. Hardly less 
diluted in the original is the sententious despatch which 
Henry IV, is said to have written to one of his nobles 



206 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

after the battle of Arques: "Hang thyself, brave Crillon; 
we have fought, and thou wert not there!" When we . 
have learned, too, that " Hang thyself! " was a hackneyed 
expression of Henry's, repeated on the most trivial occa- 
sions, the mot sinks into the veriest commonplace. 

What is more hackneyed than the saying attributed to 
Demosthenes, that "action, action, action!" that is, gesticu- 
lation, is the one thing essential to success in oratory? 
The word he used is x,tvY)(Ttz, the true signification of which 
is agitation, motion, anything of a stirring character. Not 
action, but emotion, which, if deeply felt, like murder, 
" will out," was what Demosthenes held to be so vitally 
essential, agreeing herein with the well-known maxim of 
Horace, that " if you wish me to weep, you must first grieve 
yourself." Again: how often has Cicero been quoted as 
having said, " I would rather err with Plato than hold the 
truth with the philosophers." The real sentiment of Cicero, 
''En-are mehercnle malo cum Platone . . . quam cum istis 
vera sentire" — which has been so often applauded by some, 
and by others denounced as an instance of excessive and 
almost idolatrous reverence for a giant intellect, — occurs 
in the " Tusculan Questions"; and it is only by the grossest 
perversion of the language that it can be construed into 
such an expression of a humiliating general submission to 
the authority of Plato as it is supposed to contain. The 
immediate point under discussion was the immortality of 
the soul, which was maintained by Plato, but denied by "the 
Epicureans; and it is solely with reference to the conclusion 
of Plato on this one point, not to the weight of his authority, 
that Cicero prefers to err with him rather than to think 
rightly with them. In other words, the Roman writer 
prefers to share with the Greek what he deems the benefi- 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 207 

cent possible error of eternal life, rather than entertain 
with Plato's opponents what he (Cicero) regards as the 
fearful and pernicious truth, if truth it be, of final anni- 
hilation. 

A suspicious circumstance connected with many fine 
sentiments is, that they have been put by historians into 
the mouths of different persons, and on widely different 
occasions, — thus suggesting a doubt whether they were not 
invented for rhetorical effect. Thus when Louis XIV 
revoked the Edict of Nantes, Christina of Sweden is 
reported to have said: "He has cut off his left arm with 
the right." The epigram is as old as Valentinian. Almost 
eveiy reader is familiar with the sarcasm attributed to 
Lord Eldon, concerning his predecessor on the woolsack, 
Lord Brougham, "If he only knew a little of law, he 
would know a little of everything." This is but a recoin- 
age of a saying of Louis. Passing out of chapel after a 
sermon by the Abbe Maury, he said: "If the Abbe had 
said a little of religion, he would have spoken to us of 
everything." Sully, in his Memoirs, tells us that going one 
day to see Henry IV. he met on the back stairs leading to 
the King's apartment, a young lady veiled and dressed in 
green/ Being asked by the King whether he had not been 
told that his majesty had a fever, and could not receive 
that morning: "Yes, sire," replied the minister, " but the 
fever is gone; I have just met it on the staircase dressed 
in green." Precisely the same story is told of Demetrius 
and his father. 

" Were I to die at this moment," Nelson is said to have 
written to the English government after the Battle of the 
Nile, " more frigates would be found written on my heart." 
Two and a half centuries before, Mary, Queen of England, 



208 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

is said to have deplored the loss of the last foothold of the 
English in France with the exclamation, " When I die 
Calais will be found written on my heart/' Once more: 
Mr. Motley tells us in his History of the Dutch Eepublic, 
that Montpensier, a French prince, protested to Philip II 
of Spain that he would be cut in pieces for that monarch's 
service, and affirmed that "if his body were to be opened 
at that moment, the name of Philip would be found 
imprinted on his heart." Who has not admired the noble 
reply of Wellington to a lady who expressed a passionate 
desire to witness a great victory, — " Madam, there is 
nothing so dreadful as a great victory, — excepting a great 
defeat." Yet this speech was made long before by D'Ar- 
genson, and is reported by Grimm. Among the countless 
pungent witticisms attributed to Voltaire, we are informed 
that having extolled Haller, he was told that he was very 
generous in so doing, since Haller had just said the con- 
trary of him; whereupon Voltaire remarked, after a short 
pause, "Perhaps we are both of us mistaken.'' Is it not 
a curious coincidence, that, centuries before this. Libanius 
should have written to Aristsenetus, "You are always 
speaking ill of me. I speak nothing but good of you. 
Do you not fear that neither of us shall be believed?" 

It has been said with truth that in Athenseus, Macro- 
bius, and other old jest-books, we shall find more than one 
witty saying which now adorns the brazen front of the 
plagiary. It is stated that when Lord Stormont boasted 
to Foote, the English comedian, of the great age of some 
wine which, in his parsimony, he doled out in very small 
glasses, Foote observed, " It is very little of its age." This 
identical joke is reported by Athenseus, and assigned to one 
Gnathasna, whose jokes were better than her character. 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 209 

In Irving's " Abbotsford " we are told that Sir Walter 
Scott was going on with great glee to tell a story of the 
Laird of Macnab, " who, poor fellow," he said, " is dead 
and gone.** " Why, Mr. Scott," exclaimed his " gude wife." 
" Macnab's not dead, is he?" "Faith, my dear,' 1 replied 
Scott, with humorous gravity, ''if he is not dead, they 
have done him great injustice, for they've buried him." 
The joke " passed harmless and unnoticed by Mrs. Scott, 
but hit the poor Dominie just as he 'had raised a cup of tea 
to his lips, causing a burst of laughter which sent half of 
the contents about the table." Queer, — is it not, — that in 
Dean Swift's specimens of genteel conversation in his own 
time, we should find the following: " Colonel. Is it certain 
that Sir John Blunderbuss is dead at last? Lord Sparfcisk. 
Yes. or else he's sadly wronged, for they have birried him." 
Among the after-dinner facetiae attributed to Thackeray is 
a, saying of his to Angus B. Reach, a clever young Scotch- 
man, who. when addressed as Mr. Reach, indignantly 
exclaimed, "My name is pronounced Ree-ack, in two 
syllables." Handing his angry neighbor a peach, Mr. 
Thackeray said: "Mr. Ree-ack, will you allow me to help 
you to a pee-ack?" In the Diary of Thomas Moore, we 
read that Luttrell, the wit, dined at the same table with a 
gentleman whose father invented the small napkins called 
from the name, doilies. This gentleman having insisted 
on being addressed as Mr. D'Oyley, with a long rest 
between the " D " and the rest of the name, Luttrell, 
pointing to a dumpling, blandly said, "Mr. D' — Oylev. 
may I ask yon for a little of the d' — umpling, near you?" 

Ma can lay's famous New Zealander is now known to be 
the same person, in different costume, as Shelley's " Trans- 
atlantic Commentator," Kirke White's "Bold Adventurer," 
9* 



210 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

and Horace Walpole's " Traveler from Lima": and the joke 
attributed to Sheridan, on his son's saying- that he haft gone 
down a, mine to be able to say he had done so, — "Why not 
say you had, without going down?" has been reclaimed by 
Mr. Forster for Goldsmith. An English wit used to say: 
" I don't like my jokes until Sheridan has used them, then 
1 can appreciate them." Wit, it has been well said, like 
gold, is circulated sometimes with one head on it, and some- 
times with another, according to the potentates who rule its 
realm. What was the memorable jest, in all the news- 
papers a few years ago, about the eccentricities of a 
certain family, but a repetition of Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu's witticism that " the world was made up of men 
and women and Herveys?" So the germ of Douglas Jer- 
rold's joke, that *' it is better to be witty and wise than 
witty and otherwise,' 1 has been detected in a book pub- 
lished in 1639; and the threadbare illustration of a dwarf 
standing on the shoulders of a giant, employed to illustrate 
the advantage of modern over ancient learning, is used by 
Sir William Temple, is quoted by old Burton, and has been 
traced back to the twelfth century. 

Many of these similarities of thought and expression. 
like many wonderful discoveries and inventions, are, no 
doubt, merely coincidences. As the human mind and the 
human heart are the same in all ages, we must not be sur- 
prised to find that 

"—kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire, 
As summer clouds flash forth electric Are." 

Perhaps of all the memorable sayings of great men, 
there is no other about which lovers of rhetoric have so 
often had their commonplace, as about the famous " e pur 
si tititoce." — "and yet the earth does move," — of the 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 211 

silenced, but not persuaded Galileo. And yet, as a late 
French writer has shown, not only is there no proof that 
Galileo ever uttered the epigram, but it flagrantly con- 
tradicts his whole demeanor on the trial. To regard him 
as a. martyr of science is simply ridiculous. ' Never was 
a martyr less disposed for martyrdom. He denied every- 
thing with impatient alacrity. He offered to prove that 
he had never held the doctrine of the earth's mobility, and 
declared himself ready to show, by fresh arguments, the 
error of that doctrine. In short, the epigram is "one of 
those mots dc circonstance, invented after the occasion, 
which tradition eagerly adopts because it so admirably 
expresses the general sentiment." 

Writers on religious toleration are fond of quoting the 
supposed saying of Charles V, Emperor of Germany, who 
in his retirement kept many clocks and watches, the mech- 
anism of which he was fond of studying, that it was un- 
reasonable to expect men to think alike, when no two 
clocks or watches could be made to keep precisely the same 
time. Not only does the story rest on no good authority, 
but its mythical character is evident a priori from the fact 
that in his last hours Charles enjoined on his son Philip to 
enforce uniformity of opinion by means of that terrible 
engine, the Inquisition. Moreover, he again and again 
expressed his regret that he did not put Luther t to death 
when he had him in his power. Another story of 
Charles, long implicitly believed on the authority of the 
Scottish historian, Robertson, but now exploded, is that the 
Emperor held a mock funeral of himself, — celebrated his 
own obsequies, — and in so doing caught a cold which made 
a real funeral necessary two days afterwards. 

Among the stereotyped quotations of our political wri- 



212 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

ters and stump orators, there is no one which drops oftener 
from their lips and pens than that which is so generally 
attributed to Gen. Charles Cotesworthy Pinckney, namely: 
" Millions for defence, — not one cent for tribute.' 1 While 
Mr. P. was Ambassador to the French Court, Bonaparte 
was preparing for operations against Great Britain, and 
had pledged the representatives of other powers to degrad- 
ing contributions. What Mr. Pinckney really did say, 
when Napoleon turned to him and asked, " And what will 
your Republic give?" was, "Not a penny,— not a penny." 
The cent was not then known among our coin. Nearly 
contemporary with this was the witty reply said to have 
been made by Thelwall to Erskine, when the latter, in 
reply to the former's proposal to defend himself from the 
charge of treason, wrote, " If you do. you'll be hanged." 
' : Then I'll be hanged if I do." was Thelwall's prompt 
rejoinder. A living relative of Thel wall's declares that 
he had from his own lips the statement that no such cor- 
respondence ever took place. 

Of all the brilliant epigrammatic sayings that have been 
attributed to the wrong author, no one perhaps has been 
more frequently quoted than that ascribed to that prince 
of epigrammatists, Talleyrand, on the murder of the Duke 
D'Enghien by Napoleon: "It is worse than a crime: it is 
a blunder. 1 ' The real author of the mot was Fouche\ So, 
because they have the ring of his unique witticisms, to 
Talleyrand have been attributed the saying, " It is the 
beginning of the end;" the Chevalier de Panat's remark 
on the Bourbons, that " they had learned nothing, and for- 
gotten nothing;' 1 the saying of Chamfort that " revolutions 
are not made with rose-water;" and Napoleon's observa- 
tion, "A king by birth is shaved by another. He who 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 213 

makes kings is shaved by himself." To the same arch 
diplomatist and wit has been attributed the famous saying 
that " speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts," — 
a mot which has been traced back to Goldsmith, to Voltaire, 
to the poet Young, to South, to Job, till we almost reach 
the Prometheus who stole the original fire from Heaven. 
So lucky or so cunning was Talleyrand that he even got 
the credit of saying of others what was said against him- 
self. Thus, the remark, "Who would not adore him, — he 
is so vicious? " was said of him by Montrond, not by him 
of .Montrond; and his pithy interrogatory to the dying man 
who cried out that he was suffering the torments of the 
damned. — "Beja'i'" (Already?) — was murmured by Louis 
Phillippe when Talleyrand thus characterized his own suf- 
ferings. • 

Of all peoples the French have the most passionate love 
for epigrams, and when a great man or a great occasion 
wants one. they do not . hesitate to invent it. Chamfort 
characterizes the old regime as " an absolute monarchy 
tempered by epigrams." Henry IV reigned by bon mots, 
and even Bonaparte, in the plenitude of his power, could 
not dispense with them. It was in the reign of Louis XIV 
that they reached the zenith of their splendor. When the 
king made an appointment, he communicated it to the 
object of his condescension in an elegant saying. " If I 
had known a more deserving person/' he would say, " I 
would have selected him." Perhaps no impromptu has 
been more admired than the well-known saying of Louis 
XII. when urged to revenge certain insults offered to hi in 
before his accession to the throne: "The King of France 
does not revenge the injuries of the Duke of Orleans." 
Of both the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, and the Duke of 



214 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

Savoy, predecessors of Louis, is the same anecdote related; 
and, instead of being uttered thus concisely by Louis to 
the Duke de la Tremouille, the saying was the conclusion 
of an address to the deputies of the city of Orleans, who 
were told that it would not be decent or honorable in a 
King of France to revenge the quarrels of a Duke of Or- 
leans. The reply of Hadrian was: " Minime lice re Pritt- 
cipi Romano ut quce privatus agiiasset odia, ista Imperator 

err qui." 

Who has not admired the daring address of Mirabeau 
to the minister of Louis XVI, who had been sent to the 
National Assembly, to demand its dissolution? — "Go tell 
your master that we are here by the will of the people, 
and that we will not depart except at the point of the 
bayonet! "' The real language of Mirabeau is far milder, 
and lacks the most audacious words ascribed to him. 
Almost every history of the French Revolution records 
the famous invocation to Louis on the scaffold: "Fils de 
Saint-Louis, montez an del!" Yet, when questioned on the 
address by Lord Holland, the Abbe Edgeworth frankly 
owned that he had no recollection of having made it. It 
was put into his mouth, on the evening of the execution. 
by a journalist. 

One of the most signally successful hits in the form 
of an invented saying, in French history, is the speech 
put into the mouth of the Comte d'Artois, brother of 
Louis XVIII, at the Restoration. As his Royal Highness 
rode into town, he was received by a brilliant company, 
and, in reply to an address by Talleyrand, stammered out 
a few confused sentences, for which it was felt by the 
shrewd statesman that some substitute must be prepared 
for the Monitenr. Dupont offered to "do it. "No, no," 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOEY. 215 

replied Talleyrand, "you would make it too poetical. 
Beugnot will do for that." Beugnot sat down to his 
task, but, finding some difficulty, returned to Talleyrand. 
and told him of it. " Why."* said Talleyrand, " if what 
he said does not suit you. invent an answer for him." 
" But how can I make a speech that Monsieur never pro- 
nounced?" "There is no difficulty about that," replied 
Talleyrand; "make it good, suitable to the person and 
to the occasion, and 1 promise you that Monsieur will 
accept it, and so well, that in two days he will believe 
he made it himself; and he will have made it himself: 
you will no longer have had anything to do with it."' 
" w Capital!' I answered, says Beugnot, "and attempted 
my first version, and brought it to be approved. ' That 
won't do,' said Talleyrand; ' Monsieur never makes 
antitheses or rhetorical nourishes.' I attempt a new 
version, and am sent back a second time for making it 
too elaborate. At last I am delivered of the one inserted 
in the Mo-niteur, in which I make the prince, say: 'No 
more discord: Peace and France; at last I revisit my 
native land; nothing is changed, except it be that there 
is one Frenchman the more.' 'This time I give in!' 
exclaimed Talleyrand. ' That is what Monsieur did say. 
and I answer for its having been pronounced by him.' 
In fact, the speech proved a perfect success; the news- 
papers took it up as a lucky hit; it was repeated as an 
engagement made by the Prince; and the expression, 
■ One Frenchman more!' became the necessary pass-word 
of the harangues, which began to pour in from all quar- 
ters." When the Prince complained to the ministers that 
he never uttered it, he was told that there was an 



216 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

imperious necessity for his having uttered it; and it 
became history. 

But the French are not the only people who have been 
cheated into admiration of grand oratorical explosions 
that never took place. Chatham's famous outburst in 
reply to Horace Walpole, beginning, " The atrocious crime 
of being a young man," etc., is the composition of Dr. 
Johnson, who was not even present when the actual reply 
was made, and of whose fidelity as a parliamentary reporter 
we may judge from his boast that he took care always 
that the Whig dogs should have the worst of it. 

The interest which attaches to the dying words of 
great men offers a powerful temptation to the inventive 
talents of historians and biographers. Many of these last 
utterances are too epigrammatic and sensational, — too 
well rounded off and polished, — not to provoke a doubt 
about their genuineness. Did Augustus Caesar, in dying, 
ask if he had played his part well on life's stage, and, 
when answered in the affirmative, say, '■ Then applaud"? 
Did Vespasian bid his attendants raise him from his 
couch, adding that an Emperor ought to die on his legs. 
— decet Imperatorem stantem mori? Did Chaucer alleviate 
his dying pains by "A Balade, made upon his dethe- 
bedde, lying in his great anguysse"? Did Scarron say 
to those weeping about him, " My children, you will 
never weep for me one half so much as I have made 
you laugh 11 ? Did Chesterfield, courteous to the last, gasp 
out in articulo mortis, "Give Dayrolles a chair' 1 ? How 
often has it been stated in private, and echoed from 
the pulpit, that the skeptic Hume died in an agony of 
remorse, though his christian biographer declares that 
his last moments were as peaceful and unruffled as the 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 217 

gentle Addison's, and though some of Hume's more 
intelligent enemies have asserted that in jesting about 
Charon and the boat, and his arguments with the ferry- 
man to let him off a little longer, the Scottish philoso- 
pher affected an indifference which he did not feel ! It is 
said the last words of Louis XV to Madame Du Berri 
were, " We shall meet again in another world." " A 
pleasant rendezvous he is giving me!'* she murmured; 
" that man never thought of any one but himself." Almost 
precisely the same story is told of Louis XIV and Madame 
Maintenon. Among the last words of Burns were, 
" Don't let the awkward squad fire over me," meaning a 
body of local militia, of which he was a member, and 
whose discipline he, to the last, humorously disparaged. 
It is reported that the philosopher Haller kept his finger 
on his pulse till he expired, which was immediately upon 
saying, " My friend, the artery ceases to beat." Pitt's 
heart was broken by Austerlitz, and he died exclaiming, 
' ; Oh, my country! how I leave my country!" 

It is a popular belief that Truth, if run over by a 
locomotive and train, gets well; while Error dies of 
lockjaw, if it but scratches its finger. But facts show 
this to be an illusion. When the world has once got 
hold of a lie, it is wonderful how hard it- is to get it 
out of the world. You beat it on the head, and think 
it has given up the ghost, when lo! it jumps up again, 
as lively and thrifty as ever. Bacon, in one of his 
weighty essays, after remarking that truth is a naked 
and open daylight, that does not show the masks, and 
mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately 
and daintily as candle-lights, adds, that " a mixture of a 
lie doth ever add pleasure." Once declare to the world 
10 



218 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

that Berkeley denies the existence of matter, and all over 
the world men with Berkeley in their hands will echo the 
absurdity. Say that Locke denies all knowledge except 
through the medium of the senses, and though Locke be 
studied in every college, the statement will pass unchal- 
lenged. Let some Fourth of July Orator quote from 
Bacon the hackneyed sentiment, " Knowledge is power," 
and other orators will ring the changes upon it in saecula 
saeculorum, though Bulwer again and again deny that the 
author of the " Instauration" ever penned such an aphorism. 
Of all popular fallacies there is no one more frequently 
on men's lips than the statement that Bacon was the father 
of the Inductive Philosophy, the grand founder of modern 
science. But it may be doubted whether his Novum 
Organon, or new instrument of Philosophy, was really 
new when he announced it as such, either as a process 
followed in scientific discovery, or as a theory of the true 
method of discovery. Bacon was neither the first to pro- 
claim the barrenness of the Aristotelian philosophy, nor 
is his the glory of having ended the reign of that phi- 
losophy in Europe. He but hastened the downfall of a 
system already in disrepute, and which would soon have 
been banished from the schools had his " Instauration" never 
been published. In short, as De Maistre has shown, he 
was a barometer that announced the fine weather after a 
long period of storm and controversy; and because he 
foretold the glorious daylight of true science after the 
darkness of the middle jiges, he was proclaimed the author 
of it. A contemporary called him truly "the prophet of 
science." "I have seen," says De Maistre, "the design of a 
medal struck in his honor, the body of which is a rising 
sun, with the inscription, Exortus uti aetherius sol ('He 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 219 

rose like the sun in the sky'). Nothing is more plainly 

false. Better an aurora, with the inscription, Nuncia 

soils (' Messenger of the sun ') ; and even this would be 

an exaggeration, for, when Bacon rose, it was at least ten 

o'clock in the morning." 

How often do we hear attributed to Sir Eobert Walpole 

the execrable saying, "All men have their price." Pope 

refers to it in the lines: 

" Would he oblige me, let me only find 
He does not think me what he thinks mankind." 

But the " Grand Corrupter," as he was nicknamed by his 
libelers, uttered no such sweeping slander against his fel- 
low-men. He simply declared of his corrupt opponents. 
"All those men have their price," a truth as unquestion- 
able as his alleged maxim was false. Again, let Lord 
Orrery relate, as an unquestionable occurrence, that Dean 
Swift once began the service when nobody, except the 
clerk, attended his church, with " Dearly beloved Roger, 
the scripture moveth you and me in sundry places," and 
the scandal will be again and again repeated, though a 
kinsman of the Dean show that it was published of another 
person in a jest book before Swift was born. The author 
of "The Tale of a Tub" and "The Battle of the Books" 
was not so destitute of originality as to have to borrow a 
joke as paltry as it was profane. So Swift and Butler will 
forever continue, we suppose, to divide the honors of the 
closing couplet of the epigram on the feud between Handel 
and Bononcini: 

M Strange that all this difference should be 
'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee,— " 

though neither of these wits was the author, but Dr. By- 
rom, of Manchester. As "to him that hath shall be given," 



220 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

to Butler, so long as the world is infested with rascals, will 
be awarded the credit of Trumbull's sarcasm on the Tories 
of the Revolution: 

"No rogue e'er felt the halter draw 
With good opinion of the law." 

Among the hackneyed quotations of the day is the line, 

" Small by degrees, and beautifully less," 

which is invariably misquoted from " Henry and Emma, 1 ' 
a parody published in 1521, on Matthew Prior's " Nut 
Brown Maid." Describing the dress of Emma, the lover 

says: 

tl No longer shall the bodice, aptly laced, 
From thy full bosom to thy slender waist, 
That air of harmony and shape express, 
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less." 

Another current quotation which, in England and 
France, and occasionally in this country, is attributed to 
Buffon, is this: " Le style, c'est Vhomme" — the style is the 
man. Even Professor Marsh, in his lectures on the English 
Language, reproduces the misquotation, which asserts a 
manifest untruth. What Buffon really did say was this: 
" Le style est de Vhomme meme" — "the style of a writer," 
that is, distinguished from the contents of a work, which 
must be pushed aside by fresh discoveries, " is his own 
peculiar contribution." Perhaps the tritest of all thread- 
bare quotations is the saying, " There is but one step from 
the sublime to the ridiculous;" yet even of this the pater- 
nity is commonly mistaken. It has so often been credited 
to Napoleon, instead of to Thomas Paine, that even intelli- 
gent persons are puzzled to fix the authorship. 

It has been well observed that sometimes an invented 
pleasantry passes for fact, as in the asparagus and oil story 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 221 

of Fontenelle. Fontenelle, — so the myth runs, — was sup- 
ping with a friend who liked oil, which the former dis- 
liked. It was agreed that half the asparagus should be 
dressed with oil, and half without. The friend dropped 
down in an apoplectic fit, and immediately Fontenelle hur- 
ried to the door, and called out, " Point d'huile!" — "No 
oil!" How many thousands have believed the malicious 
story about Gibbon, that, offering himself to Mademoiselle 
Churchod (afterwards Madame Neckar), he went down on 
his knees, and, being very fat, was unable to get up. The 
simple fact is, that she asked him why he did not go down 
on his knees to her, and he replied, " Because you would be 
obliged to ring for your footman to get me up again." 

So many historic sayings have never been uttered by 
the great men to whom they have been attributed, that we 
need not be astonished if we one day learn that Caesar's 
"Veni, vidi, viti" is a myth; that Perry never wrote the 
immortal words, " We have met the enemy, and they are 
ours;" and that Lawrence's "Don't give up the ship!" is 
an old sailor's yarn. Indeed, Napoleon, who understood 
the military skill of " the foremost man of all the world," 
ridiculed as absurd that saying of the great Julius to the 
pilot in a storm, " What do you fear? You carry Caesar!" 
Americans, at least American musical critics, are not ex- 
cessively proud of " Yankee Doodle, either the words or the 
tune; but the poor honor of its composition, it seems, is 
not ours. The song and tune date back to the wars of 
Roundhead and Cavalier. An early version of the words 
in England runs: 

w ' Nankee Doodle came to town 
Upon a Kentish pony; 
He stuck a feather in his hat, 
And called him Macaroni." 



222 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

The English, it is said, borrowed the song from Germany, 
and it was introduced to America as a martial or national 
air by a Dr. Shackburg, a surgeon of the regular troops at 
Albany, who was so struck by the outre appearance of the 
raw colonial levies gathered there in 1755 for the attack 
on the French posts of Niagara and Frontenac, that he 
quizzically prepared a song for them to the tune of Yankee 
Doodle, which they at once adopted as their own. It would 
be easy to multiply these illustrations, but we will add but 
one more, — the over-hackneyed piece of nonsense attrib- 
uted to Archimedes, that give him a place to stand on with 
his lever, and he would move the world. This is one of the 
standard allusions, a part of the necessary stock-in-trade 
of all orators and newspaper- writers ; and persons, when- 
ever they meet with it, think of Archimedes as an extra- 
ordinarily great man, — a giant of the intellectual giants, 
— and cry, " Eeally, how wonderful!" 

Now, it is a well-known principle of mechanical forces 
that the velocities at the extremities of a lever are recip- 
rocally as the weights at those extremities, and the lengths 
of the arms directly as those same velocities. So it has 
been shown that if, at the moment when Archimedes ut- 
tered his memorable saying, God had taken him at his 
word by furnishing him with place, prop, and lever, 
also with materials of sufficient strength, together with 
a counter-weight of two hundred pounds, — the fulcrum 
being at three thousand leagues from the centre of the 
earth, — the great geometer would have required a lever 
of twelve quadrillions of miles long, and a velocity at 
the extremity of the long arm equal to that of a cannon 
ball, to raise the earth one inch in twenty-seven trill- 
ions of years! Yet will this exposure of the colossal ab- 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 223 

surdity be of any use? Of not the slightest. Orators will 
continue to employ this bravura of rhetoric, and men will 
continue to gape with astonishment at the boast of Archi- 
medes, as if he had been foolish enough to make it, — of 
which, out of Plutarch, there is no proof whatever. 

The Roman poet, Horace, tells of a crazy citizen of 
Argos who fancied that he sat in a theatre, seeing and 
applauding wonderful tragedies. Being cured of his mad- 
ness by his friends with a dose of hellebore, instead of 
thanking them, he was indignant, and exclaimed, " By 
Pollux, you have killed me, not saved me, in thus robbing 
me of my pleasure, and expelling from my mind a most 
delightful illusion ! " Not unlike this, we fear, have been 
the feelings of the reader, while we have been disabusing 
him, perhaps, of some of his historical hallucinations. Cut 
bono? Of what use is it thus to throw all our heroes and 
heroines into the crucible? Are you sure that, as Dryden 
said of Shakspeare, burn them down as you will, there will 
always be precious metal at the bottom of the melting pot? 
Can we be confident of anything that is told us of past 
times? Is all history false? or, if not, how are we to dis- 
criminate the gold from the dross, — the reality from the 
counterfeit? If I choose to believe in the gaunt she- wolf 
of the Tiber, or that the unhappy Mary of Scotland was 
as good as she was beautiful, what harm can it do me? 
Why must I be pestered into the conviction that the first 
is a myth, and that the last was a courtesan and a mur- 
deress? Grant that the heroism of a Lucretia, — of a 
Mucius Scsevola, — is a fable; as Goethe says, "if the Ro- 
mans were great enough to invent such stories, we should 
at least be great enough to believe them." If it be true 
that "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise' 1 ; if 



224 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOEY. 

the secret of all earthly bliss lies in preserving our illu- 
sions, — in contriving, as we go through life, not to be 
disenchanted; how can you expect us to be grateful to, 
even if we are not positively angry* with, the Niebuhrs, the 
Lewises, and other historical big-wigs, who have dethroned 
so many of our idols? Is history so rich in noble deeds 
and utterances, that we can afford to lose any of the god- 
like acts, any of the sparkling jests, the happy inspirations, 
the thrilling improvisations, of great and good men? Are 
not these " fables," as you call them, almost the only poetry 
the State and county taxes have not crushed out of our 
hearts? Nay, can we spare a single epigram? 

In reply, let us say, first, that, in spite of all we have 
said, the substance of history remains intact. As in the 
case of money, the very word counterfeit implies the ex- 
istence of a true, — nay, that the great mass of silver or 
gold coin is genuine, — so with the stories of the nations. 
Again, let us remember that the spirit of inquiry and 
the spirit of scepticism are as widely removed as the 
poles. The same relentless iconoclasm, the same search- 
ing spirit of inquiry, which cheats us of many of our 
fond illusions, may also relieve human nature of countless 
unjust . stigmas of meanness, stupidity, cowardice, and 
cruelty. 

Again, as the value of the real gem is enhanced by 
the exposure of the counterfeit, — as the Dutch, by de- 
stroying one-half of their spice trees, increased the value 
of the entire crop,— so will the common stock of recorded 
or traditional wit, virtue, and heroism, be rather increased 
in value than depreciated by the illusion-destroying pro- 
cess to which history has been subjected by modern 
criticism. The occasional loss of a charming error will 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 225 

be compensated, and more than compensated,' by the 
habits of sharpness and accuracy we shall acquire, by 
challenging every story which taxes our credulity. We 
are aware that it is sometimes said that ignorance is the 
mother of admiration. If this be so, then it follows that 
one of the noblest and healthiest exercises of the mind 
rests chiefly on a deceit and a delusion, — that, with fuller 
knowledge, all our enthusiasm would cease; whereas, in 
fact, for' once that ignorance leads us to admire that 
which, with fuller insight, we should perceive to be a 
cheat or a sham, a hundred, nay, a thousand times, it 
prevents us from admiring that which is admirable in- 
deed. While, therefore, some eyes will look sorrowfully 
upon this reformation, — will regard it, in the fine image 
of Landor, like breaking off a crystal from the vault of 
a twilight cavern, out of mere curiosity to see where 
the accretion ends and the rock begins, — others will agree 
with Dr. Johnson, that the value of a story depends on 
its truth; on its being a picture of an individual, as of 
human nature in general; and that, if it be false, it 
is a picture of nothing. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu closes one of her letters 
with the remark: "There is nothing can pay one for 
that valuable ignorance which is the companion of youth. 
... To my extreme mortification, I find that I am 
growing wiser and wiser every day." But does any sen- 
sible man regret, — or any sensible woman, in this age 
of Somervilles, Stowes, and Martineaus, — that he is no 
longer cheated by the fictions that amused his childhood? 
— that he has ceased to believe that Eomulus and Remus 
were suckled by a wolf, and that Jack-the-Giant-killer, 
Sinbad the Sailor, and Robinson Crusoe, were flesh-and- 



226 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

blood personages? If not, why should he mourn because 
some relentless investigator threatens to sweep away the 
myths that have deceived his maturer judgment by sug- 
gesting grave doubts whether Curtius did actually jump 
into the gulf, or whether there was any gulf for him to 
leap into; whether Portia swallowed live coals; whether 
Xerxes cut a canal through Mount Athos, and clouded 
the sun with the arrows of his soldiers; whether Codes 
defended a bridge, single-handed, against an entire army; 
whether Rome was saved by a goose, and captured by a 
hare; whether Hannibal levelled rocks, and Cleopatra 
dissolved pearls, with vinegar; whether Belisarius did beg 
an obolus in the streets of Constantinople; whether 
Scsevola burned his right hand, or Regulus died a heroic 
death; whether Zisca's skin was made into a drum-head; 
whether Columbus's egg had not tried its trick of bal- 
ancing long before the fifteenth century; whether he did 
not first discover Watling Island, instead of Cat Island 
(or San Salvador), and whether the Norwegians were not 
500 years ahead of him; whether Alfred really burnt the 
cakes, and went disguised into the Danish camp; whether 
Hengist and Horsa, Rowena and Vortigern, are not 
shadows; whether Cromwell's dead body was hung in 
chains at Tyburn; whether there was really a Pope Joan? 
and whether Captain John Smith had more lives than 
ten cats, and was saved by Pocahontas. 

Within a few years it has been found, by the discov- 
ery of the Sinaitic and other very ancient manuscripts 
of the New Testament, that some of its most admired 
passages are forgeries, — mediaeval additions to the origi- 
nal text. It is sad to learn that the story of the woman 
taken in adultery is a myth. It is sadder still to learn 



THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOEY. 227 

that the utterance of our Lord on the cross, "Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do," is not to 
be found in some of the old manuscripts, and that the 
words in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matt, v, 44, — 
" Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you,' 1 — 
words which lie at the very foundation of Christian mo- 
rality, — must be swept away from the sacred text. What, 
then, shall we do? Shall we throw aside our Testaments, 
or shall we weep over the loss of these precious verses? 
What, indeed, do we want? Is it the interpolations of 
monks, or the very words, the exact language, of Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John, without a syllable or a letter 
added or removed? For ourselves, we thank God for 
every exposure of a forgery, whether in His book or in 
man's books; and to our mind the. most cogent proof 
that the Holy Scriptures are from Him, is the fact that 
while other histories have been found to swarm with 
errors, they, when subjected to the intensest, most micro- 
scopic scrutiny of modern criticism, have come forth from 
the ordeal substantially unscathed. 

God grant that the day may never come when we 
shall adopt the Jesuitical doctrine of Infidelity's latest 
champion, Renan. " For the success of what is good," 
he tells us in his " Life of Jesus," " less pure ways are 
necessary"; "the best cause is only won by ill means; 
we must accept men as they are, with all their illusions, 
and thus endeavor to work upon them; France would 
not be what it is, if it had not for a thousand years 
believed in the flash of holy oil at Rheims; when we with 
our scrupulous regard for truth have accomplished what the 
heroes did by their deceptions, then, and not till then, shall 



228 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 

we have a right to blame them; the only culprit in such 
cases is mankind, who wants to be cheated." (The italics 
are ours). So, according to this unblushing apostle of 
fraud, we are not to believe with John Milton that 
"Truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no 
policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, to make her vic- 
torious. 1 ' Instead of destroying the delusions of our fel- 
low men, we must use them cunningly, cheat those who 
want to be cheated, and rouge and powder, if need be, 
the face of Truth herself, to make her attractive. And 
this is the morality of a French democrat who would 
have us give up our Bibles! Let us cultivate a reverent . 
love for Truth, — pure Truth, without gloss, alloy, or 
adulteration. Let us seek to know " the truth, the whole 
Truth, and nothing but the Truth," in history, in sci- 
ence, in literature, and in religion, at whatever sacrifice 
of our prejudices, or whatever havoc it may make with 
our fondly-cherished illusions; for, if there is any truth 
which all the experience of the past thunders in our ears, 
it is that falsehood is moral poison, — that any short-lived 
pleasure which we may derive from cheating ourselves 
or from being cheated, will be dearly paid for by the 
disappointment and anguish which will be ours when the 
veil shall be torn away, and we shall see things as they 
are. 



HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING. 



A MONG the favorite topics of newspaper declamation, 
-i~L there is none upon which certain moralists of the 
press are fonder of preaching a quarterly homily, than 
upon the importance of early rising. Of course, the argu- 
ments for the practice are the old, hackneyed, stereotyped 
ones upon which the changes have been rung a thousand 
times, — " straw that has been threshed a hundred times 
without wheat," as Carlyle would say. " Early to bed, and 
early to rise," etc. There n*- a freshness, a briskness, a 
sparkling liveliness in the first hours of the day, which all 
the subsequent ones lack ; let it stand but an hour or two, 
and it is already settled upon its lees; it is stale, flat, and 
vapid. Again, the early riser seizes the day by the forelock : 
he drives it, instead of being driven, or rather dragged 
along, by it. Then, all the great men, — especially those 
who have distinguished themselves in literature, science, 
and the arts, — were early risers. Homer, Virgil, Horace, 
among the ancients, and Paley, Priestly, Parkhurst, and 
Franklin, among the moderns, all left their pillows early. 
Sir Thomas More and Bishops Jewel and Burnet sprang 
upon their feet at four in the morning. The Great 
Frederic of Prussia, Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, and 
Napoleon, were early risers. " When you begin to turn 
in bed," said the Duke of Wellington, "it is time to turn 
out." Jefferson declared at the close of his life, " The sun 
has not caught me in bed for fifty years." 

229 



230 HOMILIES OK EAELY RISING. 

Did not Sir Walter Scott write all his great novels 

before breakfast, and was it not in the same early hours 

that Dr. Albert Barnes penned those Commentaries of 

which a million volumes have been sold in this country 

and Europe? Was it not between the hours of five and 

eight in the morning that John Quincy Adams penned most 

of his public papers? Was it not in the same three hours 

that Gibbon wrote his immortal " Decline and Fall," and 

has not Buffon told us that to the studies of those three 

hours daily the world is indebted for the noble work which 

established his fame as the greatest of natural historians? 

Did not Judge Holt, who was curious concerning longevity, 

and questioned every old man that came before him, about 

his modes of living, find that, amid all their different 

habits, they agreed in one thing, — they got up betimes? 

These stale anecdotes, eked out with the old quotation from 

Thomson, 

"Falsely luxurious, will not man awake?" 

and other passages from the poets in which they try to 
inveigle people from their beds by singing of the beauty 
of the dappled morn, the dewy grass, the warbling birds, 
and preserving a studied silence concerning the rising fog, 
the chill air, and the raw, underdone feeling of the world 
generally, — comprise all the arguments which, for half a 
century, the wit of the early risers has been able to scrape 
together for the practice. 

Now all this may carry great weight with some people 
with whom an uneasy conscience, an overloaded stomach, 
or a hard bed, may, like Macbeth, " murder sleep." It is 
not strange that your old bachelor, who is happy neither in 
bed nor out, — or your henpecked husband, who dreads a 
morning curtain lecture, — or your ghostly, pale-faced, 



HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING. 231 

dyspeptic student, who fancies that by rising with the lark 
he is to become a giant in law, medicine, or theology, — 
cries up this foolish custom. Making a merit of necessity, 
they may grow grand and intolerant on the strength of 
their virtue, and crow like chanticleer over those who can 
appreciate the luxury of " t'other doze. 1 ' But those who 
have no torturing conscience, dyspepsia, or " Damien's bed 
of steel," to make Alcmena nights for them, are not to be 
dragged from their warm pillows on such pretences as - 
these. Talk of the healthiness of early rising! Who can 
believe that such violent changes from the sleeping- to the 
waking state, — from warm to cold, — are beneficial to the 
system? Why is it, if they are not unnatural, that the 
poets, refining upon the torments of the damned, make 
one of their greatest agonies to consist in being suddenly 
transported from heat to cold, from fire to ice? Are they 
not, at certain revolutions, according to Milton, " haled out 
of their beds" by " harpy- footed furies," — fellows by whom 
they are made to 

" -feel by turns the bitter change 
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce "? 

" But think," we hear some one exclaim, " of the 
amount of time saved by early rising"! When .all other 
arguments are exhausted, the early riser will call for 
slate and pencil, and proceed to prove to you by a painful 
arithmetical calculation that you may add some six or 
seven years to your life by crawling out of bed at five 
o'clock instead of seven. Of 'course, he makes it con- 
venient to forget, in his calculation, the two hours one 
loses by hurrying to bed that much sooner, in order to 
humor his foolish eccentricity; as if one should try to 
lengthen a yard-stick by cutting off a foot from one end 



232 HOMILIES OK EARLY RISING. 

and adding it to the other. Admitting that we may add to 
our days by rising early, is the longest life necessarily the 
best? Or is it desirable to spin out one's years to three- 
score and ten, if, to do so, he must cheat himself of all 
life's comforts and luxuries, — abjure his morning snooze, 
"feed on pulse, and nothing wear but frieze''? The lapse 
of years alone is not life; we should count time by heart- 
throbs, — by the number of delicious or pleasing sensations. 
As to one's growing wealthy by early rising, we leave it 
to the candle-end-saving economists to say whether it is 
cheaper to keep one's self warm by coal at ten dollars a 
ton than between a mattress bed and comforters. Recollect 
that you wear out no clothes, consume no oil, eat no break- 
fasts, while you are coquetting with " tired nature's sweet 
restorer." Then, as to growing wise by early rising, — has 
not knowledge-seeking been associated, from time imme- 
morial, with the midnight oil? Have not all the great 
works of genius which have conferred immortality on their 
authors, been written while the rest of the world was 
hushed in slumber, — in the "wee small hours ayant the 
'twal"? Is not every elaborate literary production said 
to smell of the lamp, thus showing that, in the opinion of 
authors and critics, Apollo has no time to attend to his 
votaries until he has unharnessed his steeds from the 
chariot of the sun? Did not Pope's best thoughts come 
to him, like owls, in the night-time; and did not Swift, 
according to a contemporary, " lie abed till eleven o' clock, 
and think of wit for the day " ? But, admitting an excep- 
tion or two to the general rule, — because Sir Walter Scott 
wrote whole books before breakfast, is anyone foolish 
enough to natter himself that he can dash off Waverleys 
and Ivanhoes simply by striking a light at four in the 



HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING. 233 

morning, — poscente ante diem librum cum lumine? Boobies 
and dunces will be boobies and dunces still, though they 
keep their eyes wide open from January to December. 
Early rising will no more convert a fool into a wise man, — 
a commonplace man into a man of genius, — than eating 
opium will make him a Coleridge or a DeQuincey. The 
examples of Frederic the Great and the Emperor Napoleon 
may weigh with their admirers; but we believe it would 
have been far better for humanity if they had loved their 
pillows. It was only after a desperate and most unnatural 
struggle that the former triumphed in his youth over the 
charms of sleep, which he found it harder to resist than in 
after life to rout the Austrians ; and he succeeded only by 
invoking the assistance of an old domestic whom he charged, 
on pain of dismissal, to pull him out of bed every morning 
at two o'clock. As to the poet Thomson's panegyrics on 
early rising, who usually snored away the whole forenoon 
in bed, and was so lazy that he used to eat peaches from the 
trees in his garden with his hands in his waistcoat pocket, — 
literally broivsing, like a giraffe, — our judgment of his 
counsel is pithily expressed by an American poet, Saxe: 

''Thomson, who sang about the Seasons, said 

It is a glorious thing to rise in season; 
But then he said it, — lying, — in his bed 

At ten o'clock a. m.,-— the very reason 
He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is, 
His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice." 

It is very well to "take Time by the forelock"; but 
what if, in the effort to do so, one exhausts himself too 
much to hold him? George Eliot, in one of her novels, 
portrays a thrifty farmer's wife who rose so early in the 
morning to do her work, that by ten o'clock it was all 
over, and she was at her wits' end to know what to do 
10* 



234 HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING. 

with her day. No doubt it is " the early bird that catches 
the worm"; but, as the pillow-loving boy said to his father, 
" it is the early worm that gets caught." Intemperance 
in early-rising, like every other excess, is sure to bring 
its penalty along with it. Nature will not be cheated 
out of her dues, and if they are not paid in season, she 
will exact them, with compound interest, out of season. 
It is well known that the early riser often compensates 
himself for his greeting to the dawn by frequent naps 
in the afternoon or evening. Josiah Quincy tells us in 
the " Life " of his father, that the latter rose every morn- 
ing in winter and summer, for many years, at four 
o'clock. The effect of this outrage upon Nature was that 
he was sure to drop to sleep, wherever he was, when his 
mind was not actively occupied, — sometimes even in com- 
pany, when the conversation nagged, and always as soon 
as he took his seat in his gig or sulky, in which he drove 
to town. John Quincy Adams, who was addicted to the 
same vice of intemperate early rising, with similar con- 
sequences, once accompanied him to the Harvard Law 
School, to hear Judge Story lecture. " Now Judge Story," 
continues the biographer, " did not accept the philosophy 
of his two friends in this particular, and would insist 
that it was a more excellent way to take out one's allow- 
ance of sleep in bed, and be wide awake when out of it, — 
which he himself most assuredly always was. The Judge 
received the two Presidents gladly, and placed them in 
the seat of honor on the dais by his side, fronting the 
class, and proceeded with his lecture. It was not long- 
before, glancing his eye aside to see how his guests were 
impressed by his doctrine, he saw that they were both of 
them sound asleep, and he saw that the class saw it too. 



HOMILIES OK EARLY RISING. 235 

Pausing a moment in his swift career of speech, he pointed 
to the two sleeping figures, and uttered these words of 
warning: 'Gentlemen, you see before you a melancholy 
example of the evil effects of early rising ! ' The shout 
of laughter with which this judicial obiter dictum was 
received effectually aroused the sleepers, and it is to be 
hoped that they heard and profited by the remainder of 
the discourse." 

There is a class of moralists at the present day with 
whom it is a favorite dogma that no one can ever reach 
a high degree of goodness except by passing through a . 
certain number of self-imposed trials. It has been justly 
said of such persons that their whole mind seems wrapt 
up in the office of polishing up little moral pins and 
needles, and running them into the most tender parts of 
their skins. It is chiefly men of this stamp who advo- 
cate the heresy of early rising. Were they content to 
stick pins into themselves, we would leave them to get 
all the moral discipline that is possible from the practice. 
But they insist on other persons imitating them; and 
what is more offensive, they are continually putting on 
airs on account of their eccentricity. Not content with 
" shaking hands with himself mentally," and thinking he 
has done a great thing, the early riser must vaunt him- 
self of his achievements herein. Indeed, there are few 
things in the way of bragging that will compare with 
what an English essayist calls " the insulting triumph, 
the outrageous animation of the man who has dressed by 
candle-light in the month of December." It is not mere- 
ly that he speaks of the exploit with a chuckle, or the 

" — sort of satisfaction 
Men feel wheu they've done a noble action." 



236 HOMILIES OK EAELY KISING. 

but he looks down upon you who hug your pillow, with 
an air of superiority, as if you lacked moral backbone, 
or were a pigmy in virtue. 

There is a caustic proverb, " We are all good risers 
at night," which strikingly shows how unnatural is this 
practice of getting up early. We have long been puzzled 
to account for the origin of so disagreeable a practice; 
but a recent English writer suggests an explanation which 
is as satisfactory as it is original and ingenious. For those 
who have to labor in the fields, or to get their living by 
hunting, there are obvious advantages in making the most 
of the daylight. Now philosophers have remarked that an 
instinct, like a physical organ, often survives after its 
original function has become unimportant. Animals retain 
rudimentary claws or wings which have become perfectly 
useless, a legacy from their remote ancestors; a dog still 
turns himself three times around before he lies down, 
because his great-great-grandfathers did so in the days 
when they were wild beasts, roaming amongst the long 
grass; and every tamed animal preserves for a time 
certain instincts which were useful to him only in his 
wild state. The sentiment about early rising is such a 
traditionary instinct, which has wandered into an era 
where it is not wanted. 



LITERARY TRIFLERS. 



A HISTORY of the misdirected labors of the human 
-*»- *~ race would form one of the most curious and in- 
structive, as well as one of the most voluminous, books 
that could be compiled. It would show that, while util- 
ity has been a sharp spur to human effort, difficulty and 
the love of praise have furnished motives equally power- 
ful. Not to speak of the pyramids, those mountains of 
masonry, which, though costing the labors of thousands 
for many years, serve only as monuments of human 
folly; or of huge walls stretching along the length of an 
empire; or of the costly monuments reared to perpetuate 
the memory of things which men should be anxious to 
forget-, or of the oceans of time wasted in the profitless 
researches of astrology, magic, quadrature of the circle, 
perpetual motion, etc. ; let us glance for a few moments 
at some of the fruits of a similar folly in the literary 
world. Here, after all, will be found the most prodigal 
waste of time and labor, as the far-stretching Saharas of 
useless, and worse than useless, books that greet the eye 
in every Bodleian library will testify. There are authors 
who have written hundreds of volumes, folio, quarto, and 
octavo, full of the veriest commonplace, and which now 
not only sleep quietly and undisturbed on the shelves, 
but which respect for the human understanding compels 
us to believe could never have found even yawning 
readers. 

237 



238 LITEBARY TEIFLERS. 

Perhaps theology may claim to be the Arabia of liter- 
ature, for here are far-reaching wastes or Great Deserts 
of books, in which, could he live as long as the ante- 
diluvians, one might travel for ages, without finding 
a single verdant spot to relieve the eye or cheat the 
painful journey. In one of the immense libraries of 
Continental Europe there is pointed out to the traveler 
one entire side of a long hall filled with nothing but 
treatises on a certain mystical point in divinity, all of 
which are now but so much old lumber, neglected even 
by the antiquary, and fit only for the pastry-cook or the 
trunk-maker. As space is limitless, and there are large 
chasms of it still unfilled by tangible bodies, it may 
seem cruel to grudge these writings the room they oc- 
cupy. Yet one cannot but lament such an enormous 
waste of labor, nor with the utmost stretch of charity 
can he refrain from believing that, though Nature may 
have abhorred a vacuum in the days of Aristotle, her 
feelings must have greatly changed since mediocrity has 
filled it with so wretched apologies for substance and 
form. 

The celebrated William Prynne, whose ears were cut 
off by Charles II, wrote over 200 books, nearly all ele- 
phantine folios or bulky quartos, not one of which the 
most inveterate literary mouser of our day ever peeps 
into. In 1786 the Rev. William Davy, an obscure curate 
in Devonshire, began writing a " System of Divinity," 
as he termed it, in twenty-six volumes, which, being- 
unable to find a publisher, he resolved to print with his 
own hands. With a few old types and a press made by 
himself, he began the work of typography, printing only 
a page at a time. For twelve long years he pursued 



LITERARY TRIFLERS. 239 

his extraordinary labors, and at last, in 1807, brought 
them to a close. As each volume of the twenty-six octavo 
volumes of his work contained about 500 pages, he must 
have imposed and distributed his types, and put his press 
into operation 13,000 times, or considerably more than 
three times a day, omitting Sundays, during the long 
period of his task, — an amount of toil without remuner- 
ation which almost staggers belief. Only fourteen copies 
were printed, which he bound with his own hands, and 
% few of which he deposited in the public libraries of 
London. He died at an advanced age in 1826, hoping 
to the last for a favorable verdict from posterity, though 
even the existence of "his magnum opus, — magnum in 
size only, — is probably not known to ten men in Great 
Britain. 

But it is not in the literary productions of the eighteenth 
or nineteenth century, but in those of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth, that are to be found some of the most signal 
examples of misdirected intellectual labor. We refer to 
those torturing experiments upon language called ana- 
grams, chronograms, echoes, macaronies, bouts-rimes, acros- 
tics, palindromes, alliterative verses, etc., which were poured 
forth in floods, not by mere flippant idlers, or dunces 
who deemed themselves wits, but often by 'scholars of bril- 
liant abilities and attainments. Weary Of the search after 
ideas, disgusted with great speculations that ended in 
doubt, and dissatisfied with wisdom that brought no heart's 
ease, and knowledge that only increased sorrow, the think- 
ing men of those ages, like their predecessors of more 
ancient times, often employed their leisure moments in 
the composition of laborious trifles, — magno conatu magnas 
nugas, — which mocked the fruits of their graver studies 



240 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 

with something of a fairy quaintness. Follies of this 
kind date back, indeed, almost to the invention of letters. 
The Greeks had their lipogrammatists, who could write 
elaborate poems or treatises from which a particular let- 
ter was excluded. An ancient poetaster wrote a para- 
phrase of the " Iliad," in which alpha or a was rejected 
from the first book, beta or b from the second, and so to 
the end. Both the Greeks and the Eomans had their 
karkinie poems, or reciprocal verses, so written that the 
line was the same whether read backward or forward, a» 
in the following: 

"Roma, tibi, subito motibus ibit amor." 

Lope deVega wrote five novels, the first without an 
A, the second without a B, the third without a C, and 
so on. At one time, even long after the revival of learn- 
ing, the grand merit of a large part of English and 
Scottish verse lay in the ridiculous conceit of all the 
words of a line beginning with the same letter; at another 
time, it was a favorite device to write Latin verses of 
which every line began with the same syllable that had 
concluded the preceding one, — a kind of game of shuttle- 
cock, in which one player stationed on the left tossed a 
line across the page to a second, who, passing with the 
velocity of thought to the same side, hurled another at a 
third; and thus the match continued till he who began 
the sport put a stop to it by making his appearance on 
the opposite list. In this way the poor hapless poetaster 
was forced to hobble along an avenue, guarded on either 
side by a row of unrelenting monosyllables, which, if his 
mettlesome fancy manifested any inclination to scamper 
according to the freedom of her own will, brought her 
effectually to her senses. 



LITERARY TRIFLERS. 241 

But, of all the ridiculous shackles invented by the 
devotees of these coxcombical arts, the restrictions on the 
shape, form, and length of poems, were the most absurd 
and ludicrous. There are many poems of the sixteenth 
century on which a sort of Chinese ingenuity seems to 
have been expended; the lines being so drawn in here, 
and stretched out there, — so cut, twisted, and tortured 
in every conceivable way, — as to have a rude, general 
resemblance to the most fantastical objects. Of course, it 
was a rare triumph of ingenuity when an amatory poem 
could be squeezed into the shape of a heart, fan, or lady's 
gown; a still greater, perhaps, when a sonnet on destiny 
could be put into the figure of a pair of scissors; but 
when an anacreontic could be coaxed into the form of a 
wine-glass, or a meditation on mortality into the shape 
•of an hour-glass or tombstone, the effect was absolutely 
overwhelming. One Benlowes, a wit who, though now 
forgotten, is said to have been " excellently learned in his 
day," had a wonderful facility in this kind of literary 
carpentry. Butler, the author of " Hudibras," thus iron- 
ically commends him in his "Character of a Small Poet": 
" There is no feat of activity, nor gambol of wit, that 
ever was performed by man, from him that vaults on 
Pegasus to him that tumbles through the hoop of an 
epigram, but Benlowes has got the mastery of it, whether 
it be high-rope wit or low-rope wit. As for altars and 
pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men in that way; 
for he has made a gridiron and a frying-pan in verse, 
that, besides the likeness in shape, the very tone and 
sound of the words did perfectly represent the noise 
made by these utensils, such as Sartago loquendi." 

Another excruciating exercise of wit, which was in 
11 



242 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 

vogue in the sixteenth century, especially with those 
who could not aspire to the lofty art of shaped-verse- 
making, was the framing of anagrams. By the ancients, 
anagram-making, or the transposing of the letters of 
certain words so as to produce new words, was classed 
among the cabalistic sciences; and it was often thought 
that the qualities of a man's mind, and his future des- 
tiny, could be guessed at by anagrammatizing the letters 
of his name. When this could be done in such ^a 
way as to bring forth a word or sentence pointedly 
allusive to the original idea, it was deemed a mar- 
vellous feat, and the happy wit was ready to scream 
with joy. In France, such weight was attached to this 
jugglery with letters, that Louis XIII pensioned a pro- 
fessional transposer of words. Occasionally a name would 
appear to defy all attempts to torture it into meaning, 
and the pains and throes of the anagrammatist, while in 
labor, were sometimes terrible to behold. The venerable 
Camden speaks of the difficulty as" a whetstone of patience 
to them that shall try the art. For some have beene seene 
to bite their pen, scratch their head, bend their browes, bite 
their lips, beate the boord, teare their paper, when they 
were faire for somewhat, and caught nothing therein." 
Addison gives a most ludicrous account of one of these 
word-torturers, who, after shutting himself up for half a 
year, and having taken certain liberties with the name of 
his mistress, discovered, on presenting his anagram, that 
he had misspelled her surname! by which misfortune he 
was so thunderstruck that he shortly after lost his senses. 
If ever an explosion of wrath were justifiable, and one 
might be excused for losing all self-command, and crying- 
out with Hamlet, 



LITERARY TRIFLERS. 243 

"—Ay, turn thy complexion there, 
Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubin,' . 

it must be in a case like that. 

Almost as unhappy as this was the experience of Daniel 
Dove, who, after long brooding over his own name, was 
able to hatch from it the ominous presage, " leaden void." 
Knowing that, with a change of one letter, he might have 
become " Ovid," he felt like the man whose lottery-ticket 
was next in number to the £20,000 prize. Sometimes 
from the same name may be extracted both good and evil 
omens, as in the case of Eleanor Davies, wife of the poet, 
and the Cassandra of her age, who belonged to the Court 
of Charles II. Having extracted the quintessence of her 
own name, and finding in it the impure anagram, 
"Reveal, Daniel!" she began to croak prophecies by 
no means agreeable to the Government, when she was 
silenced by an arrow drawn from her own quiver. She 
was arraigned before the Court of High Commission, the 
Judges of which vainly racked their brains for arguments 
to disprove her claims to inspiration, when luckily it 
occurred to one of them to take his pen and write a 
letter anagram upon her name: Dame Eleanor Davies: 
"Never so mad a ladie!" — which, hoisting the engineer 
with his own petard, forever silenced the prophecies. 
The . ingenuity of the Judge is only paralleled by that of 
John Bunyan, whose anagram on his own name, " Nu 
hony in a B," is a masterly triumph over the difficulties 
of orthography. 

" The anagram," says Richelet, " is one of the greatest 
follies of the human mind. One must be a fool to be 
amused by them, and worse than a fool to make them." 
Drummond, of Hawthornden, denounces the anagram as 



244 LITERARY TRIFLERR. 

" the most idle study in the world of learning. Their 
maker must be homo mdserrimce patientiae, and when he is 
done, what is it hut magno conatu nugas mugnas agere!" 
Happy, therefore, he thought, was that countryman of his, 
whose mistress's name, being Anna, G route, contained a 
ready-made and most acceptable Anagram. Considering 
that not a few men of high repute, — illustrious scholars 
and thinkers even, — have tried their hand at this " ineptie 
de f esprit humain" these must be considered as somewhat 
exaggerated statements. The anagram is a triumphant 
answer to the question, "What's in a name? 11 especially 
when by a slight transposition a Wit is found in Wiat, 
Renown in Vernon, and Laurel in Waller. Though ana- 
grams are not the grandest productions of human genius, 
yet the intellectual ingenuity that is sometimes displayed 
in resolving a word into its elements, and from these ele- 
ments compounding some new word characteristic of the 
person or thing designated by the original, is quite surpris- 
ing. For example, what can be more curious than the 
coincidence between Telegraphs and its anagram, viz. : 
great helps? So of Astronomers, — moon-starers; Peni- 
tentiary, — Nay, I repent it-, Radical Reform, — Rare mad 
frolic. Hardly less felicitous "are the following: Presby- 
terian, — best in prayer; Gallantries, — all great sin; Old 
England, — golden land. Some years ago there was an 
eminent physician in London, whose name, John Aber- 
nethy, on account of his bluntness and roughness, was 
metamorphosed into " Johnny the Bear. 1 ' It is probable 
that even "Ursa Major 1 ' himself smiled and growled a,t 
the same time when he first heard this witty anagram. 

Few persons will yield to the logic of political ana- 
grams, but it is impossible not to be struck by the famous 



LITERARY TRIFLERS. \14-o 

Frantic Disturbers, made from Francis Burdett; and, in 
an ignorant age, doubtless not a few persons were con- 
firmed in their dogged adherence to the Pretender to the 
British throne, while his enemies were startled and con- 
founded, by the coincidence of Charles James Stuart with 
his anagram, He asserts a true claim. The two finest ana- 
grams ever made are: Honor est a Nilo (Honor is from 
the Nile), from Horatio .Nelson; and the reply evolved 
from Pilate's question, "Quid est Veritas?" (What is truth?) 
u Vir est qui aclest" (It is the man who stands before } r ou.) 
The following, written by Oldys, the bibliographer, and 
found by his executors among his manuscripts, will be 
regarded by many as " quaintly good," to use an expres- 
sion of Isaak Walton's: 

" In word and WILL I AM a friend to you. 
And one friend OLD IS worth a hundred new. 1 ' 

The Greeks made few anagrams, and the Romans de^ 
spised them. Nearly all Latin anagrams are of modern 
manufacture; as, from corpus (body) porcus (pig), from 
logica (logic) caligo (darkness). The French have invented 
a few very happy anagrams, of which a remarkably in- 
genious one is that on Frere Jacques Clement, the assassin 
of Henri III, " C'est l'enfer qui m'a cree." What can be 
more beautiful than the anagram on the name of Christ, 
in allusion to the passage in Isaiah liii, " He is brought as 
a sheep to the slaughter"? 

"IH20YE. 

UOrjdTq — 'Thou art that sheep." 

Rousseau, ashamed of his father, who was a cobbler, 
(•hanged his name into Verniettes, — in which a wit dis- 
covered more than the author had dreamed of, namely, 



246 LITERARY TRLFLERS. 

Tu te rentes. Voltaire's name is an anagram, derived from 
his real name, Arouet l.j.\ or Arouet le jeune. As a speci- 
men of a witty anagram, there is one on Charles Genest, 
a Frenchman of much note, which is, as Mrs. Partington 
would say, " a chief-done-over;" it is unrivaled. The gen- 
tleman in question was distinguished by a preternaturally 
large organ of smell, such as would have thrown Napoleon 
Bonaparte or Eden Warwick into raptures of admiration, 
' — whereupon some ingenious wag finds in his name the 
mirth-provoking anagram, " Eh? c'est un grand nezl" 
(Eh? it is a great nose!) 

One of the prettiest of modern anagrams is the follow- 
ing: 

'Florence Nightingale, 
Flit on, charming angel!' 1 '' 

When the eloquent George Thompson was urged to go into 
Parliament to serve the cause of negro emancipation more 
efficiently, one of his friends found a cogent reason for 
such a course in the letters of his name: 

"George Thompson, 
go, — the Negroes M. P. / " 

A patriotic Englishman made Napoleon Bonaparte read in ' 
Latin, Bona rapta leno pone, or " Rascal, yield up your 
stolen possessions." The last anagram we shall cite, 
though less brilliant than the foregoing, as a mere feat 
of intellectual ingenuity, is wonderfully truthful, — namely, 
editors, who are always so tired. 

Another curious phase of literary labor is alliteration, 
which may be a mere trick or conceit of composition, or a 
positive ornament. When used too often it is suggestive 
of laborious efforts, and affects the reader like the feats of 
an acrobat, which excite at last an interest more painful 



LITERAEY TRIFLERS. 247 

than pleasant. But, when used with such subtle art as to 
be noticed only by the peculiar charm of sound that ac- 
companies it, it is one of the most delicate graces of lan- 
guage. Spenser uses alliteration often, and sometimes 
with the finest effect, as in the "Shepherd's Calendar": 

" But home him hasted with furious heate, 
Encreasing his wrathe with many a threate; 
His harmeful hatchet he hent in hand." 

In the following verse of Tennyson, there is an alliter- 
ative beauty in the pleasant interlinking of the sounds of 
d, and «, and I, which is peculiarly delicious to the ear, 
because it is so subtle as hardly to be noticed by a common 
reader : 

"Dip down upon the Northern shore, 
Oh, sweet new year, delaying long; 
Thou dost expectant nature wrong, 
Delaying long,— delay no more." 

Shakspeare has occasional instances of happy allitera- 
tion, as in 

"•The churlish chiding of the winter's wind"; 

and again in the line, 

"In maiden meditation, fancy-free;" 

and in the following passage from "Macbeth," where the 
grandeur of the effect is greatly increased by the repeti- 
tion of the letter s: 

" That shall, to all our nights and days to come, 
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom." 

The poet ridicules, however, the excessive use of this de- 
vice, as in the prologue to the interlude of Pyramus and 
Thisbe in "Midsummer Night's Dream": 

" Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, 
He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast." 



248 LITERARY TR1FLERS. 

Alliteration adds not a little to the force of Burns's 
word-painting, as when he calls Tarn O'Shanter 

"A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum," 
and characterizes the plowman's collie as 

"A rhymin', rantin', rovin' billie." 

Byron was a great master of alliteration. It was a 
favorite device of his, and his finest passages, whether 
grave or gay, owe much of their beauty and power to it. 
E. g.- 

"He who hath bent him o'er the dead, 
Ere the first day of death has fled, 
The first dark day of nothingness, 
The last of danger and distress." 

In the " Corsair " he has thirty-one alliterations in 
twenty-three lines, yet so skilfully used that the reader 
is conscious of no mannerism. What an addition of pun- 
gency and comic effect is given to the epigram by this 
expedient, may be seen by the following lines from Byron's 
''English Bards and Scotch Eeviewers": 

"Yet mark one caution, ere thy next review 
Spreads its light wings of saffron and of blue, 
.Beware lest Wundering .Brough'm destroy the sale, 
Turn beef to ftannocks, cauliflowers to k&i\ ! " 

Coleridge was an adept in the use of this rhyming 
ornament, as a single example will suffice to show: 

"The white breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
The furrow followed free." 

Professor G. P. Marsh states that Milton, and the 
classic school of poets generally, avoid alliteration alto- 
gether; but this is too sweeping a statement, as, had 
we space, we might easily show. How much the allitera- 
tion adds to the expressiveness of his 

"Behemoth, biggest born of earth!" 



LITERARY TRIFLERS. 249 

and how greatly is the force of the following lines inten- 
sified by the same device, where he strings together his 
vowels and consonants in juxtaposition, so as to make 
the verse more harsh and grating to the ear: 

"Others apart sat on a hill retired, 
For thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 
Fixed /ate, free will, /oreknowledge absolute." 

The most brilliant poets of the day abound in this 
device, and even the most accomplished prose-writers do 
not disdain what Churchill calls 

"Apt alliteration's artful aid." 

In the following lines, by Austin, we have an almost 
excessive use of it: 

" You knew Blanche Darley ? Could we but once more 
.Behold that £>elle and pet of '54! 
Not e'en a whisper, vagrant up to Town 
From hunt or race-ball, augur'd her renown. 
Far in the wolds sequester'd life she led, 
.Fair and un/ettered as the /awn she/ed, 
Caress'd the calves, coquetted with the colts, 
.Bestowed much tenderness on Turkey polts; 
.Bullied the huge, ungainly Woodhound pup, 
TifTd with the terrier, coax'd to make it up: 
The farmers quizzed about the ruin'd crops, 
The fall of barley and the rise of hops. 
#o soft her tread, no nautilus that skims 
With sail more silent than her Ziquid /imbs. 
Her presence was low music; when she went 
She left behind a dreamy discontent, 
As sad as silence, when a song is spent." 

In irony, satire, and all kinds of comic writing, 
— and even in invective, — alliteration adds a peculiar 
piquancy to the comic effect. Thus Grattan, denouncing 
the British ministry, said: "Their only means of govern- 
ment are the guinea and the gallows. 1 ' Sydney Smith 



250 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 

employs this feature of style with masterly skill and 
effect; as when he speaks of an opponent as "a polupha- 
gous, poluposous, and pot-bellied scribbler' 1 ; and when, 
in contrasting the position of the poor curates with that 
of the high dignitaries of the English Church, he calls 
the two classes "the Rt. Rev. Dives in the palace, and 
Lazarus in orders at the gate, doctored by dogs and 
comforted with crumbs." A still more striking instance 
is an ironical passage in the " Letters of Peter Plymley," 
in which, ridiculing a measure of Mr. Perceval, the 
British Premier, he asks: "At what period was the plan 
of conquest and constipation fully developed? In whose 
mind was the idea of destroying the pride and plasters 
of France first engendered? . . . Depend upon it, the 
absence of the materia medica will soon bring them to 
their senses, and the cry of 'Bourbon and Bolus! " burst 
forth from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. " 

Proverbs owe much * of their piquancy and point to 
alliteration, and favorite passages of poetry owe their 
frequency of quotation not a little to this element, which 
greatly aids in their recollection. Two hundred years 
ago John Norris wrote the line 

"Like angels' visits, short and bright," 
which Blair, half a century later, improved into 
"Visits, like those of angels, short and far between"; 

but Campbell, unconsciously appropriating it, " contrived 
at one blow to destroy the beauty of the thought, and 
yet to make the verse immortal by giving it a form that 
soothes the ear and runs glibly off the tongue": 

" Like angels' visits, few and far between," 
— a line which is palpably tautological. 



LITERARY TRIFLERS. 251 

The following is probaoly the most remarkable speci- 
men of alliteration extant. Any one who has written an 
acrostic, and who has felt the embarrassment of being 
confined to particular initial letters, can appreciate the 
ingenuity demanded by these verses, where the whole 
alphabet is fathomed, and each word in each line exacts 
its proper initial. The author must have been " homo 
miserrimcB patientice "; 

"An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, 
Boldly, by battery, besieged Belgrade. 
Cossack commanders cannonading come, 
Dealing destruction's devastating doom: 
Every endeavor engineers essay, 
For fame, for fortune — fighting furious fray: 
Generals 'gainst generals grapple — great God! 
How honors Heaven heroic hardihood! 
Infuriate — indiscriminate in ill, 
Kinsmen kill kinsmen — kindred kindred kill! 
Labor low levels loftiest, longest lines — 
Men march 'mid mounds, 'mid moles, 'mid murderous mines. 
New noisy numbers notice nought 
Of outward obstacles, opposing ought: 
Poor patriots, partly purchased, partly pressed, 
Quite quaking, quickly quarter, quarter 'quest; 
Reason returns, religion's right redounds, 
Suwarrow stops such sanguinary sounds. 
Truce to the Turk — triumph to thy train! 
Unjust, unwise, unmerciful Ukrane! 
Vanish vain victory, vanish victory vain! 
Why wish we warfare, wherefore welcome were 
Xerxes, Ximenes, Xanthus, Xaviere? 
Yield, ye youths! ye yeomen, yield your yell! 
Zeno's, Zarpater's, Zoroaster's zeal, 
And all attracting — against arms appeal." . 

Alliteration occurs sometimes in the writings of the 
ancients, but not, it is supposed, designedly, as they re- 
garded all echoing of sound as a rhetorical blemish. 
Cicero, in the " Offices," has this phrase, — " Sensim sine 



252 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 

sensu Betas senescit"; and Virgil, in the "iEneid," has 
many marked alliterations. 

There are several Latin poems of the Middle Ages in 
alliterative verse, the most famous of which, the Pugna 
Porcorum per Publium Porcium Poetam, or " Battle of 
the Pigs," in which every word begins with p, extends 
to several hundred lines, thus, — 

"Propterea properans proconsul, poplite prono, 
Precipitem plebem pro patrum pace poposcit, 
Persta paulisper pubes preciosa! precamur." 

Among the literary devices which have " fretted their 
brief hour upon the stage, and now are no more," are 
double rhymes, in which Butler and Hood especially ex- 
celled. A still more ludicrous form of comic verse is 
where the rhyme is made by dividing the words, being 
formed by a similar sound in the middle syllables; as 
in Canning's lines; — 

"Thou wast the daughter of my Tu- 
tor, Law Professor in the U- 
niversity of Gottingen; 

or in Smith's 

"At first I caught hold of the wing, 
And kept away; but Mr. Thing- 
umbob, the prompter man, 
Gave with his hand my chaise a shove, 
And said, ' Go on, my pretty love, 
Speak to 'em, little Nan."' 

Akin to the waste of labor in anagrams, chronograms, 
alliterations, assonances, etc., though not strictly to be 
classed under literary trifles, is the waste of labor upon 
microscopic penmanship. Years of toil have been devoted 
to copying in a minute print-hand books which could 
have been bought for a trifle in ordinary typography. 
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, one Peter Bales wrote a 



LITERARY TRLFLERS. 253 

copy of the Bible, with the usual number of pages, in a 
hand so fine that the whole could be put into a walnut-shell. 
In St. John's College, Oxford, there is shown a portrait of 
Charles I, done with the pen in such a way that the lines 
are formed by verses of the Psalms, all of which are 
included in the work. When Charles II visited the Col- 
lege, he asked for it, with the promise to grant any favor 
in return; the request was granted, and the owners imme- 
diately asked to have the gift restored to them. In the 
British Museum there is a portrait of Queen Anne, on 
which appear a number of minute lines and scratches. 
These, when examined through a microscope, are found to 
be the entire contents of a small folio-book which belongs 
to the library. Some years ago a gentleman in London 
bought a pen-and-ink portrait of Alexander Pope, sur- 
rounded by a design in scroll-work. Upon examining it 
through a glass, to discover the artist's name, he was 
astonished to find that the fine lines in the surrounding 
scroll were a biography of the poet, so minutely transcribed 
as to be legible only by the aid of a magnifier. 

Another literary trifle upon which a vast amount of 
time and ingenuity has been expended, is the riddle. 
Riddle-making has been popular in all ages and countries, 
and not only the small wits, but the big-wigs, of Greece, 
Rome, France, Germany, and England, have amused them- 
selves with it. Schiller, the German poet, was an adept in 
this art, and some of his riddles are marvels of ingenuity. 
Here is one by Fox, the great English orator: 

''Formed long ago, yet made to-day, 

And most employed when others sleep; 
What few would wish to give away, 
And none would wish to keep." 

The answer is — a bed. 



254 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 

Dr. Whewell, the late Master of Trinity College, is 
credited with the following, which was often on his lips. 
It would baffle a sphynx: 

"UOa 0, but I thee, 
O no 0, but O me; 
Then let not my a go, 
But give 10 thee so." 

"You sigh for a cypher, but I sigh for thee, 
O sigh for no cypher, but O sigh for me; 
Then let not my sigh for a cypher go, 
But give sigh for sigh, for I sigh for thee so." 

Whew — well done! we hear a punning reader exclaim. 

The following is inferior to the sighing riddle, so often 
repeated to his friends by the author of the " History of 
Inductive Sciences, 1 ' but it is not the device of a bungler: 

"Stand take to takings. 
I you throw my" 

" I understand 
You undertake 
To overthrow 
My undertakings." 

Prof. De Morgan, author of the celebrated work on 
" The Theory of Probabilities," is the author of a cunning 
punning riddle: How do you know there is no danger of 
starving in the desert? Because of the sand which is 
there. And how do you know you will get sandwiches 
there? Because Ham went into the desert, and his 
descendants bred and mustered. 

The following curious epitaph was found in a foreign 
cathedral : 

" EPITAPHIUM. 

O quid tuse 

be est biae; 

ra ra ra 

es et in 

ram ram ram 

ii." 



LITERARY TRIFLERS. 255 

These puzzling lines have been explained as follows: 
Ra, ra, ra, is thrice ra, i. e., ter-ra — terra; ram, rain, ram, 
is thrice ram, i. e., ter-ram — terram; i i is twice i i, i. e., 
i-bis — ibis. The first two lines are to be read: super be, 
quid super est tuse super bise. The epitaph will then be: 

u O superbe, quid superest tuse superbiae? 
Terra es et in terram ibis." 

We know not who is the author of the following 
curious line: 

" Sator arepo tenet opera rotas." 

1. This spells backward and forward the same. 2. The 
first letters of all the words spell the first word. 3. The 
second letters of all the words spell the second word, 
4. The third letters of all the words spell the third word; 
and so on through the fourth and fifth. 

We will close with a specimen of the puzzles in letters: 

"CC 

SI" 

" The season is backward." (The C's on is backward.) 

Truly the human mind is like an elephant's trunk, — 
capable of grasping the mightiest objects, and of adapting 
itself with equal facility to the meanest and most trifling. 
There is but one thing to which we can compare the labors 
of this whole tribe of triflers, — -it is to the toils of those 
unwearying imps who were set by the magician to the task 
of twisting ropes out of sea-sand. 



WRITING FOR THE PRESS. 



A LMOST every person who is a known contributor to 
-*--*- the press receives, more or less often, letters like the 
following: "I am not earning enough to pay my ex- 
penses, and, to make the two ends meet, I would like 
to write for the press. Can you give me some hints?" 
The number of persons who, when at their wits' ends, 
in despair of eking out a living in any other way, look 
to journalism as a last resource, is legion. The passion- 
ate appeals which are made personally or by letter to 
the managing-editor of a leading journal, beseeching him 
to buy articles, nine-tenths of which are utterly worth- 
less, and ninety-nine hundredths of which could not be 
got into the paper, were they ever so interesting, make 
his place anything but a bed of roses. Even in the old- 
fashioned newspaper- establishments, where four or five 
steep, dark, and dingy stair-cases must be climbed to 
reach the editorial den, some would-be contributor, male 
or female, may be seen panting up the steps almost 
hourly; "but, in the modern offices, in which the steam- 
elevator has placed all the floors on a level, the swarms 
of writers that beset the manager, coaxing, imploring, 
almost insisting, that their MSS. shall be used, render 
his situation absolutely appalling. To ninety-nine out of 
every hundred of these persons he must return an inex- 
orable No. No would-be contributor, however, dreams 
that he is doomed to be one of the ninety-nine; and be- 
256 



WBITIKG FOR THE PRESS. 257 

cause it is useless, therefore, to begin with Punch's advice 
to those about to marry, "Don't!" we offer the following- 
suggestions: 

First, consider well whether you have the peculiar 
qualifications required in a newspaper-writer. Writing 
for the press has grown to be an art by itself; it is one 
whose rules and principles, like those of music, sculpture, 
and painting, must be mastered by intense, patient, and 
persistent study by those who aspire to success. To write 
a really good editorial or contribution is like scaling an 
Alp, which, in its clearness of atmosphere, seems so near, 
and yet is so far a*nd so hard of ascent. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that, because the 
greater includes the less, the talents which qualify a man 
to write a first-rate book will make him a good article- 
writer. Many an author of reputation, who has reasoned 
thus, has started off brilliantly in the career of journal- 
ism; but, after a little smart writing and display of 
bookish ability, has " fallen flat and shamed his worship- 
ers," because he could not seize and condense the spirit 
and moral of passing history. As Carlyle complains of 
the needle-women of England, that there are seamstresses 
few or none, but botchers in abundance, capable only of 
" a distracted puckering and botching, — not sewing, only 
a fallacious hope of it, a fond imagination of the mind"; 
so in literary labor, especially journalism, it is but too 
true that there are many botchers, and few skilled work- 
men, — very little good article-writing, and a deal of 
" distracted puckering and botching." It is true there is 
no mystery in the craft when we have once learned it, 
as there is none in walking on a tight-rope, turning a 
double back-summersault, or vaulting through a hoop 
11* 



258 WHITING FOR THE PRESS. 

upon a running horse. The difficulty is, — to learn. It 
may seem a very easy thing to trim a bonnet; but hun- 
dreds of expert workmen, who can do things far more 
difficult and complicated, fail utterly when they try to 
trim a bonnet. A man may be a brilliant review or 
magazine writer, and yet not show a particle of skill or 
tact in conducting a daily or weekly newspaper. It is 
one thing to elaborate an article at leisure, " with malice 
prepense and aforethought.' ' in one's study, hedged in by 
books on every side, with other " appliances and means 
to boot"; and quite another to cope with the hydrostatic 
pressure, the prompt selection of salient points, and the 
rapid, glancing treatment of them, demanded by a daily 
journal. 

Which, indeed, are the most popular papers of the 
day? Is it the journals that are filled mainly with long 
and ponderous disquisitions that smell of the lamp; arti- 
cles crammed with statistics, and useful knowledge of 
the " penny-magazine " stamp, which it is more painful 
to read than it was to write them? No; they are, almost 
without exception, those whose merit lies in condensation; 
which, with full reports of news, and a limited number 
of elaborate discussions, give the apices rerum, the cream 
and quintessence of things; whose pithy paragraphs, 
squeezed into the smallest possible space, may be taken 
in by the eye while the reader is occupied in discussing 
a cup of coffee, or devoured like a sandwich between two 
mouthfuls of bread and butter. These are the papers 
which are sought for with avidity, and devoured with 
keen relish; which are passed from hand to hand, and 
read till they are worn out; and to serve up the spicy 
repast they furnish, is a Sisyphan task, which requires 



WRITING FOR THE PRESS. 259 

ceaseless industry and a peculiar combination of talents 
which not one educated man in a thousand possesses. 

It is the lack of these talents and the neglect of these 
principles which explain the failure of so many newspa- 
pers and newspaper-writers. The rock on which they 
split is ignorance or forgetfulness of the very end of a 
newspaper. The first thought which should be uppermost 
in the mind of every writer for the press is that this 
" map of busy life " is a thing not to be read or studied, 
but to be glanced over. The contents must be such as 
at once to catch the attention. Take care, then, at the 
beginning, not to frighten the reader by a long article. 
Big guns make a loud noise, but rifle-balls often do the 
greatest execution. A tremendous thought may be packed 
into a small compass, made as solid as a cannon-ball, and 
cut down everything before it. "A brief ejaculation," 
says South, "may be a big and a mighty prayer"; and 
a ten-line paragraph, — a single thought, pungently pre- 
sented, — may change a man's convictions in politics or 
religion, or be a. seed-corn to fructify through his whole 
life. An ideal newspaper article is not an exhaustive 
essay, but a brief monogram, for which one positive and 
central idea is sufficient. As Virgil says of farms: "Ad- 
mire long articles; cultivate short ones." 

To achieve this, make sure that you have something 
to say, and say it only when you are in the vein, — in 
your best mood. Are you a clergyman? Don't write on 
"blue Monday," when you feel like a mouse in an 
exhausted receiver. Why rush before fifty thousand 
readers when you feel so stupid that you can't prepare a 
sermon for five hundred hearers? Waste no time on 
introductions. Don't begin by laying out your subject 



260 WRITING FOR THE PRESS. 

like a Dutch flower-garden, or telling your motives for 
writing. Nobody cares how you came to think of your 
theme, or why you write upon it. Sink rhetoric, and 
throw Blair and Campbell to the winds. Copy Milton, 
who does not stop to invoke his Muse till he has first 
announced his theme, " of man's first disobedience and 
the fall." Plunge at once into the very middle of your 
subject, and " pluck out the heart of its mystery." The 
first end is to excite attention. The keynote should be 
struck, if possible, in the very first sentence. A dull 
beginning often damns an article; a spicy one, that whets 
the appetite by a prime, juicy slice right out of the middle 
of the coming joint, often commends an article to both 
editor and reader. Be brief and crisp, giving results 
only, not processes, — suggesting argument rather than 
stating it. Don't serve up with the pearl the oyster and 
the shell. 

Put your points clearly and sharply; don't cover them 
up with verbiage, but let them stick out. Macaulay well 
says that a bold, dashing, scene-painting manner is that 
which always succeeds best in periodical writing. Let 
your sentences be electrically charged. Let every word 
leap with life, and blot out every one which does not 
help to clench the meaning. Condense, — condense, — con- 
dense. Ignore all inferences, and regard explanatory 
sentences as a nuisance. Some writers always explain a 
thing to death. Throw subordinate thoughts to the dogs. 
Thin your fruit that the tree may not be exhausted, and ■ 
that some of it may come to perfection. Above all, stop 
when you are done. Don't let the ghost of your thought 
wander about after the death of the body. Aim to "be 
suggestive, not exhaustive, and leave the reader to draw 



WRITING FOR THE PRES*. 261 

many inferences for himself. Take for granted, after all 
your condensation, that your article is twice too long. 
Leave off the beginning and the conclusion, and make the 
middle as short as possible. Cutting it down may require 
nerve, but it is the compactness which makes it do 
execution. Lastly, lay aside your paper, if possible, for 
a week, and then retouch" it; strengthen its weak points, 
and polish its rough ones. Too many article-writers 
grudge the toil which is necessary to perfect their con- 
tributions. They quote Taine, who condemns transitions, 
elegances of style. " the whole literary wardrobe." to the 
old-clothes shop. " The age demands ideas, not arrange- 
ment of ideas; the pigeon-holes are manufactured; fill 
them." True, in a certain sense: but ideas, like soldiers, 
owe their force largely to their arrangement. Thoughts 
become different thoughts when expressed in different 
language. Other newspaper-writers believe in fast writ- 
ing, which is generally apt to be hard reading. The 
thought, they say, should be struck off in the passion of 
the moment; the sword-blade must go red-hot to the 
anvil, and be forged in a few seconds, not by piecemeal, 
if you would have it of heavenly temper. Granted; but, 
after the forging, long and weary polishing and grinding 
must follow before your sword-blade will cut. What 
would you think of a cutler who should say, " I turn 
out knives with great facility, but I cannot stop to give 
them an edge?" Cassius Etruscius boasted that he could 
write two hundred pages before dinner, and as many 
after. He was burned, as he deserved to be, on a pile 
of his own productions. 

We have said nothing of the mechanical parts of an 
article. That it should be written legibly, on one side 



262 WRITING FOR THE PRESS. 

of small-sized sheets, with careful punctuation and spell- 
ing, and plenty of paragraphs, is generally known. We 
might add other useful hints; but enough. Follow the 
directions we have given, and, if you have a soul that 
fires with great thoughts, and fears not to utter them 
freely, you may wield with the pen a power that no 
sceptre can rival. But, if yon have no enthusiasm or 
inspiration, and can't put fire into your writings, you 
would better put your writings into the fire. If you don't 
do so, and your article goes to " Balaam's box," don't fly 
into a passion and call the editor a fool, or assert that 
he is prejudiced. Mothers are always partial to their 
deformed children, and authors think most highly of their 
rickety literary bantlings. Don't waste a moment's time 
in vindicating your productions against editors or critics, 
but expend your energies in writing something which shall 
be its own vindication. 

Finally, do you feel, on reading these hints, as did 
Rasselas when he had listened to the detail of the quali- 
fications necessary to a poet, and exclaimed: " Who, then, 
can be a poet?" We confess it is the picture of an ideal 
article- writer that we have drawn; but, though the con- 
ception that haunts our brain is one which we have been 
utterly unable to realize, — though our ideal, after many 
weary years' pursuit, still flies before us like the horizon, 
and mocks us with its unattainable charm, — we still have 
the satisfaction of knowing that our readers yawn less 
frequently than if we had adopted a lower and more 
easily-reached standard. 



STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 



rTlHAT the study of foreign languages is a necessary 
-*- part of a liberal education is a proposition which few 
intelligent persons will at this day dispute. The records 
of thought and knowledge are many ton gued; and, there- 
fore, as a means of encyclopaedic culture. — of that thorough 
intellectual equipment which is so imperiously demanded 
of every scholar, and even thinker, at the present day, — a 
knowledge of foreign literature, both ancient and modern, 
is absolutely indispensable. 

Familiarity with foreign languages liberalizes the mind 
in the same way as foreign travel. The Emperor Charles V 
once said that to learn a new language was to acquire a 
new soul. * The man who is familiar only with the writers 
of his native tongue is in danger of confounding what is 
accidental with what is essential, and of supposing that 
manners and customs, tastes and habits of thought, which 
belong only to his own age and country, are inseparable 
from the nature of man. Acquainting himself with foreign 
literatures, he finds that opinions which he had thought to 
be universal, and feelings which he had supposed in- 
stinctive, have been unknown to millions. He thus loses 
that Chinese cast of mind, that contempt for everything 
outside of his own narrow circle, which was a foe to all 
self-knowledge and to all self-improvement. He doubts 
where he formerly dogmatized; he tolerates where he 
formerly execrated. Qualifying the sentiments of the 



264 STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 

writers of his own age and country with the thoughts and 
sentiments of writers in other ages and other countries, he 
ceases to bow slavishly to the authority of those who 
breathe the same atmosphere with himself, and with whose 
idiosyncrasies he is en rapport. He declines henceforth to 
accept their opinions, to make their tastes his tastes, and 
their prejudices his prejudices, and thus avoids that mental 
slavery which is baser than the slavery of the body. 

While we thus appreciate the value of linguistic studies 
to the few who have the time and money for thorough 
culture, we yet doubt whether the study of foreign lan- 
guages, to the extent that fashion now exacts, is wise or 
profitable. That an Englishman, Frenchman, or German, 
even though a business man, should deem a knowledge of 
them not only useful, but even vital to his worldly success, 
we can understand. There is hardly a commercial house 
of any note in England that does not sell goods to Ger- 
many, France, Switzerland, Sweden, or Russia; hence every 
such house must have employes to conduct its foreign corre- 
spondence, and a knowledge of foreign tongues is, therefore, 
one of the best recommendations with which a young man 
seeking a clerkship can be armed. The. same is true of 
Germany and France; but who will pretend that such is 
the fact in this country? If, instead of all speaking a 
common tongue, the Eastern, Northern, Southern, Western, 
and Middle States of our country spoke as many languages, 
the lingual necessities of our merchants and manufacturers 
would be similar to those of the great business houses of 
Europe; but, as the facts are, no such necessities exist. It 
is true we have a few houses that do business with* Europe ; 
and it is true, also, that in a few of our largest cities, 
there are many foreigners who cannot speak English; but, 



STUDY OF THE MODEKK LANGUAGES. J65 

everywhere else, linguistic knowledge is of little prac- 
tical use. 

The question is not whether a knowledge of French and 
German is desirable per se, but whether it is not too dearly 
purchased. Is it worth the heavy tax which our youth pay 
for it? Cannot the weary days, weeks, months, and even 
years, which are spent in acquiring what, after all, is 
usually but the merest smattering of those tongues, be 
more profitably spent upon English literature and the 
sciences'? There is hardly any subject upon which so much 
illusion prevails as upon the supposed ease with which a 
modern language can be mastered. We hear it daily 
remarked that French and Italian are very easy, and that 
German, though presenting some difficulties, is by no means 
hard to acquire. Now the truth, to which, sooner or later, 
every student is forced to open his eyes, is, that the acquisi- 
tion of any language, as Mr. Lincoln said of the crushing 
of the Rebellion, is " a big job." The mastering of a 
foreign tongue, even the easiest, is the work, not of a day, 
but of years, and years of stern, unremitting toil. 

It is true that Mr. Macaula}^ undertook (we know not 
with what success) to possess himself of the German lan- 
guage during a four months' voyage from India to Europe ; 
but have we not the authority of the same Mr. Macaulay 
for the statement that Frederick the Great, after reading, 
speaking, writing French, and nothing but French, during 
more than half a century, — after unlearning his mother 
tongue in order to learn French, — after living familiarly 
many years with French associates, — could not, to the last, 
compose in French, without imminent risk of committing 
some mistake which would have moved a smile in the 
literary circles of Paris? Mr. Hamerton, the author of 
13 



266 STUDY OF THE MODERN" LANGUAGES. 

"The Intellectual Life, 1 ' — a most competent judge, — lays 
down the following two propositions, tested by a large 
experience, as unassailable : 1. Whenever a foreign lan- 
guage is perfectly acquired, there are peculiar family 
conditions. The person has either married a person of the 
other nation, or is of mixed blood. 2. A language cannot 
be learned by an adult without five years 1 residence in the 
country where it is spoken; and, without habits of close 
observation, a residence of twenty years is insufficient. 
Mr. Hamerton further adds that one of the most accom- 
plished of English linguists remarked to him that, after 
much observation of the labors of others, he had come to 
the rather discouraging conclusion that it was not possible 
to learn a foreign language. 

This is an extreme position; but, if by " learning a lan- 
guage " is meant a thorough acquisition of it, so that one 
can speak and write it like a native, we believe that the 
statement is impregnable. Of course, we except the few 
prodigies of linguistic genius, — the Magliabecchis and the 
Mezzofantes, of whom but one appears in a century, — men 
who, as Be Quincey says, in the act of dying, commit a rob- 
bery, absconding with a valuable polyglot dictionary. 

Will it be said in reply, that a knowledge of a foreign 
language may fall short of perfection, yet be of great prac- 
tical and even educational value? We admit it; we admit 
that there are men who learn many languages sufficiently 
for certain practical purposes, and yet never thoroughly 
master the grammar of one. Such a man was Goethe. 
Easily excited to throw his energy in a new direction, as 
his biographer tells . us, he had not the patience which 
begins at the beginning, and rises gradually, slowly, into 
assured mastery. Like an eagle, he swooped down upon 



STUDY OE THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 267 

his prey; he could not watch for it with cat-like patience. 
But though Goethe had no critical knowledge of foreign 
languages, — was but an indifferent linguist, — he had what 
was better for his own purposes, the divining instinct of 
genius, which enabled him to seize upon and appropriate 
the spirit of compositions, to a knowledge of which other 
men attain only by a critical study of the letter. But 
Goethe's method is one that can be safely followed only by 
those who have Goethe's genius. For the mass of students 
there is no royal road, no safe short-cut, to a language. 
The Duke of Wellington, when asked how he spoke French, 
replied, " With the greatest intrepidity;" and so he fought 
at Waterloo; but it was not till, after years of patient toil, 
he had mastered the art of war. Intrepidity is an indis- 
pensable thing; but it is not reasonable, if possible, till 
after one has conquered all the difficulties of the idiom. A 
mastery far short of this may be very serviceable; but we 
do not believe that the smattering which the great major- 
ity of our young men and women get, — and ivhich is all 
they can get in most cases, — can possibly enrich them intel- 
lectually. 

As Mr. Hamerton justly urges, until you can really 
feel the refinements of a language, you can get little help 
or furtherance from it of any kind, — nothing but an inter- 
minable series of misunderstandings. " True culture ought 
to strengthen the faculty of thinking, and to provide the 
material upon which that noble faculty may operate. An 
accomplishment which does neither of these two things for 
us is useless for our culture, though it may be of consider- 
able practical convenience in the affairs of ordinary life." 
In the weighty words of Milton: "Though a man should 
pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the 



268 STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 

world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in 
them, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned 
man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his 
mother dialect only. 1 ' 

He is a poor economist who looks only at the value of 
an acquisition without counting the cost. If a young 
man can begin his studies early and continue them till 
his twenty-first year, by all means let him study French 
and German. But in no case would we have him study 
those tongues at the expense of utter ignorance or the 
merest surface-knowledge of his own language and its 
literature, and of the physical sciences. That the two 
latter branches of knowledge are far more essential than 
the former to both his success and' happiness, we cannot 
doubt, Unfortunately, the majority of our young men 
are compelled to plunge into business so early that they 
are forced to elect between the two acquisitions; they 
cannot have both. For such persons to choose the French 
and German, and neglect the sciences and their own noble 
tongue and its literature, is as absurd as it would be for 
a laborer to stint himself all the year in meat or bread 
that he may enjoy a few baskets of strawberries in April. 
We yield to no one in our admiration of Montaigne, Pascal, 
Moliere, Cuvier, and Sainte-Beuve, or of Goethe, Schiller, 
Lessing, Eichter, and Heine ; but we do, nevertheless, echo 
most heartily the words of Thomas DeQuincey, — himself 
a consummate linguist, — when he declares that it is* a 
pitiable spectacle to see young persons neglecting the 
golden treasures of their own literature, and wasting their 
time on German, French and Italian authors, comparatively 
obscure, and immeasurably inferior in quality. (See p. 22.) 

The same writer has admirably explained the secret of 



STUDY OF THE MODERN LA^GUAliES. 269 

this strange preference, — a preference with which fashion 
has doubtless as much to do as the cause he names: " It is 
the habit (well known to psychologists) of transferring to 
anything created by our own skill, or which reflects our 
own skill, as if it lay causatively and objectively in the 
thing itself, that pleasurable power which in very truth 
belongs subjectively to the mind of him who surveys it, 
from conscious success in the exercise of his own energies. 
Hence it is that we see daily without surprise young 
ladies hanging enamored over the pages of an Italian 
author, and calling attention to trivial commonplaces, such 
as, clothed in plain mother English, would have been more 
repulsive to them than the distinctions of a theologian or 
the counsels of a great-grandmother. They mistake for a 
pleasure yielded by the author what is in fact the pleasure 
attending their own success in mastering what was lately 
an insuperable difficulty." 

We are fully convinced that even the literary man, 
though he cannot dispense with a familiarity with the 
modern languages, pays a high price for his knowledge. 
Here, as everywhere else, the law of compensation holds. 
Familiarity with foreign idioms almost invariably injures 
an author's style. We know that the Romans, in exact 
proportion to their study of Greek, paralyzed some of 
the finest powers of their own language. Schiller tells us 
that he was in the habit of reading as little as possible in 
foreign tongues, because it was his business to write Ger- 
man, and he thought that, by reading other languages, he 
should lose his nicer perceptions of what belonged to his 
own. Thomas Moore, who was a fine classical scholar, tells 
us that the perfect purity with which the Greeks wrote 
their own language was justly attributed to their entire 



270 STUDY OE THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 

abstinence from any other. It is notorious that Burke, 
after he took to reading the pamphlets of the French 
terrorists, never wrote so pure English as he did before. 
Gibbon, .who boasted that his Essai sur V Etude de la 
Literature was taken by the Parisians for the production 
of one of their own countrymen, paid for the idiomatic 
purity of his French by the Gallicisms that deform the 
" Decline and Fall." 

Our young men might be pardoned for making some 
sacrifices to acquire a knowledge of the modern languages, 
if such a knowledge were necessary as a key to their 
literatures; but it is not. Nearly all the masterpieces 
have been translated into English. We are aware of the 
objections to translations; they are, at best, as Cervantes 
said, but " the reverse side of tapestry." The scholar has 
yet to be born who can reproduce in their full splendor in 
another tongue the epithets of St. Paul, the silvery lights 
of Livy, the ciiriosa felicitas of Horace, or the picture- 
words of iEschylus. But how many of our young men 
and women, who cannot give themselves a liberal edu- 
cation, are likely to enjoy the originals better than the 
translations that are executed by accomplished linguists? 
Not one in fifty. If a man of so exquisite a taste as 
Mr. Emerson prefers, as he tells us, to read foreign works 
in translations, is it at all likely that " Young America," 
with his almost utter ignorance of the niceties and deli- 
cacies of the modern languages, will lose much by imitating 
his example? We say, then, in conclusion, if you are a 
man of leisure, or have sufficient time and money for a lib- 
eral education, by all means study French and German, and, 
if you can, Spanish and Italian; but, if you are to begin 
life at eighteen or twenty, let Spiers and Adler alone. 



STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 271 

Your first duty is to acquaint yourself with the learn- 
ing and literature of your own and the mother country. 
Our English granaries will, of themselves, feed a long 
life. When you have mastered the giants who wrote in 
your mother-tongue, — when the great works of Chaucer, 
Shakspeare, Hooker, Bacon, Milton, Swift, Wordsworth, 
Byron, Mill, Tennyson, and all our other representative 
authors, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into 
your mental constitution, it will be time to go abroad 
after " fresh fields and pastures new. 1 ' But do not, we 
beg of you, indulge the foolish ambition of becoming a 
polyglot when you cannot write a grammatical letter in 
your mother-tongue, and have never read a page in half 
of its best writers. 



WORKING BY RULE. 



A BOSTON correspondent of the New York " Tribune, 1 ' 
-*— *- in speaking of the late Professor Agassiz, remarks 
that he was singularly unmethodical in his habits. Men 
who live and work by rule would be puzzled to under- 
stand how the great scientist contrived to do so much 
without these helps. Agassiz lived and worked by in- 
spiration. " If he was suddenly seized with an interest 
in some scientific inquiry, he would pursue it at once, — 
putting b} r , perhaps, other work in which he had just 
got fairly started. 'I always like to take advantage of 
my productive moods,' he said to me. Thus he often had 
several irons in the fire, only one of which might be 
ultimately finished. Probably he saw that the last iron 
promised to work up better than the first. He never 
could be made to work like a machine, turning out a 
definite quantity at regular intervals. He never felt 
bound to regard the rule that you must finish one thing 
before you begin another, so emphatically presented in 
the old copy-books." 

The fact here stated concerning the habits of Agassiz, 
points to an important principle of intellectual labor which 
merits the attention of all mental workers. There are 
some persons who seem to think the great end and aim 
of life is to practice the minor virtues. To be courte- 
ous, punctual, economical in the management of time and 
money, — to do one thing at a time, and never to pro- 



WORKING BY RULE. 273 

crastinate, — in short, moral dexterity and handiness, — 
are qualities which they never tire of glorifying, and 
which, above all others, they aim to exemplify in their 
own lives and characters. Almost every liberally-edu- 
cated man can remember some persons of this class whom 
he knew in college, — young men who were marked by 
their associates for their enslavement to certain stiff, 
cast-iron rules, more inflexible than the laws of the 
Medes and Persians, so often referred to by stump-speak- 
ers, — by which they regulated their minutest actions. 
Over their mantels were posted a long string of regula- 
tions, which, at a heroic sacrifice of comfort, they daily 
and sedulously observed, — such as these: "Remember 
to: 1. Rise at 6. 2. Recitation at 7. 3. Breakfast at 8. 
4. Exercise half an hour. 5. Study two hours;" and so 
on. If they had an hour or a half-hour for general read- 
ing, they would read to the end of it with the most 
exemplary conscientiousness, however stupid they felt, or 
however persistently their wits went wool-gathering; and, 
on the other hand, they would shut the book exactly on 
the instant when the minute-hand got opposite the dot, 
however deeply the passage might chance to interest them. 
Such martyrs to method are generally very conscientious 
men, who honestly wish to make the most of their facul- 
ties and opportunities; but generally, we fear that they 
are not overstocked with brains, and, as they do not 
create a prodigious sensation in college, so they are 
rarely guilty of setting any rivers on fire after gradua- 
tion. It was good people of this kind that Sir Walter 
Scott had in his mind's eye when he said he had never 
known a man of genius who could be perfectly regular 
in his habits, whilst he had known many blockheads who 



274 WORKING BY RULE, 

could. The Roman poet, Juvenal, with his usual vigor- 
ous touch, has painted a " representative man " of this 
class : 

" If he but walk a mile, he first must look 
For the fit hour and minute in his book; 
If his eye itch, the pain will still endure, 
Nor, till a scheme be raised, apply the cure." 

Now, it is well to have some method in one's actions, 
— even in one's madness, as did Hamlet; but to be 
shackled, by many and minute rules of conduct, — to rule 
all one's actions with a ruler, — to divide one's time with 
a pair of compasses, and allow precisely so much to this 
thing and so much to that, — is an intolerable torment. 
The virtues that accompany method,— such as punctu- 
ality, the disposition not to loiter, and the power of 
working up spare moments for useful purposes, — are all 
commendable; they help a man to do his work triumph- 
antly, and in an easy, assured manner; but it is possible 
to overrate their value. They oil the wheels of life, and 
make them run without hitch or creaking; but they do 
not determine the character of that life. Their only 
value is derivative, and they have no more power to do 
the business of life than a pulley has to lift a weight. 
Robert Hall used to say of early rising, that the real 
question was not what time you get up, but what do 
you do when you are up. So method and the improve- 
ment of time are important in themselves ; but a far 
more important question is, how do you improve your 
time? It is well to be at your post at the very moment 
the clock strikes the hour; but it is far more important 
to be able to discharge its duties after you have got 
there. Mental stature, intellectual power, has not a very 
close relation, we fear, to the virtues of a martinet. A 



WORKING BY RULE. 275 

wise, thoughtful, useful man, — a clear-headed reasoner, a 
profound thinker, — may be immethodical, dilatory, slov- 
enly, just as a giant may be clumsy, awkward, and 
loose in all his make-up. 

Perhaps no two persons were ever more unlike each 
other, in respect to method or system, than Southey and 
Coleridge. They strikingly illustrate the advantages and 
drawbacks of the habit of mind which has been so much 
lauded. Southey was as regular as a clock. Always 
prompt and punctual, he did his work with the exactness 
and precision of a machine; and the watch no sooner 
ticked the hour than his literary tale of brick was forth- 
coming. He wrote poetry before breakfast ; he read during 
breakfast; he read history till dinner; he corrected proof- 
sheets between dinner and tea; he wrote an essay for the 
"Quarterly" afterwards; and after supper composed "The 
Doctor," an elaborate jest. Never was there a greater 
miser of time; never, since Pliny, were moments so con- 
scientiously, improved. Even when walking for exercise, 
he took a book with him. But what does his life prove, 
except that the habits of mind best fitted for communi- 
cating information, — habits formed with the greatest care, 
and daily regulated by the best motives, — are exactly 
the habits which are likely to afford a man the least in- 
formation to communicate? Southey's works are prodigies 
of learning and labor; but who reads them now? What 
work has he produced which the world " will not will- 
ingly let die " ; what bold, striking thoughts has he uttered 
which stick in the memory like barbed arrows, that can- 
not be withdrawn? Of the hundred and three volumes, 
which, in addition to the one hundred and fifty review- 
articles, he so painfully composed, not one, in all proba- 



276 WORKING BY RULE. 

bility, except possibly the " Life of Nelson," of which his 
publisher dictated the subject and size, will be read fifty 
years hence. The truth is, Southey read and wrote so 
systematically and so mechanically, — so much like a ma- 
chine, — that his life was monotonous and humdrum; it 
had no adventures, changes, events, or experiences; and 
hence his works show a painful want of intellectual bone 
and muscle, and rarely touch the hearts or thrill the 
sympathies of his hearers. Gorgeous passages may be 
found in them, — proofs of vigorous fancy and imagina- 
tion; but his persons and their adventures are so super- 
natural — so dreamy, phantom-like, and out of the circle 
of human sympathies, both in their triumphs and suffer- 
ings, — that his elaborate and ambitious poems produce 
on us the impression of a splendid but unsubstantial 
nightmare. 

Now look at Coleridge. He passed his whole life out at 
elbows, physically and morally. He loitered and dawdled; 
he wasted whole weeks and months; he had no sense of the 
value of minutes ; he prosecuted a thousand literary schemes 
which were never finished; and, when he died, left behind 
him, as Lamb playfully said, " forty thousand treatises on 
metaphysics and divinity, not one of them complete." It 
is in these fragments, — in casual remarks, scribbled often 
on the margins of books, and reminding us of the Sibyl's 
leaves, — in imperfectly- reported conversations, and in a 
few brief but exquisitely-harmonized poems, that we must 
look for the proof of Coleridge's mighty but imperfectly- 
recorded powers. Yet who that is familiar with these, and 
with the writings of Southey, can doubt that Coleridge was 
by far the greater man of the two; and who can help 
suspecting that there was, if not a direct connection, at 



WORKING BY KULE. 277 

least a strong sympathy between his genius and his sloven- 
liness? He had, as another has said, a gift for seeing the 
difficulties of life, its seamy side, its incongruities and con- 
tradictions, which he would probably have lost if he had 
been more respectable and victorious. 

" But Agassiz's or Coleridge's method of working would 
be ruinous to any man who had not their wonderful facul- 
ties, their far-sight and insight." No doubt; and therefore 
neither of them ever proposed his own method of working 
as a model for others. " Once, in my presence," says the 
correspondent of the " Tribune," " a near relative ventured 
to ask him (Agassiz) if he did not think he would accom- 
plish more if he finished one thing before he began another. 
' Every man must work according to his own method,' he 
replied. It was frequently a hard thing to get him to sign 
a paper, or write a letter (except for somebody else), or to 
look over accounts, or to do little routine work. Yet he 
could never have attained his great eminence in science if 
he had not paid, in his department, great attention to the 
minutest and apparently the most insignificant details. 
Looking at the drawing of a fish made by his artist, he 
said, after taking a single glance, ' It is a beautiful draw- 
ing, but don't you see you have left out two or three of the 
scales?' " 

The sum of the matter is, method, like fire, is a good 
slave, but a bad master, and is too apt to degenerate, like 
other minor virtues, into mere priggishness. As intel- 
lectual companions, your systematic, square-rule-and-com- 
pass men are, of all persons, the dullest and most unsatis- 
fying. " I do not like," says the charming French writer, 
Xavier De Maistre, in his " Voyage autour de ma Chambre," 
" people who are so completely the masters of their steps and 



278 WORKING BY RULE. 

their ideas that they say to themselves, ' To-day I will make 
three visits; I will write four letters; I will finish that 
work which I have begun.' " We sympathize with him. 
We respect the literary Pharisees, who tithe mental mint, 
anise, and cummin, with scrupulous regularity; but we 
cannot love them. Even in morals, it is not the most 
straight-laced persons, — the "unco guid," who never 
deviate by a hair's breadth from the path of propriety, — 
that are the best Christians, the best neighbors and citizens, 
parents or children, husbands or wives. John Milton 
has justly denounced those scrupulists " who, when God 
has set us in a fair allowance of way, never leave subtle- 
izing and casuisting till they have straightened and pared 
that liberal path into a razor's edge to ivalk on." And 
the wise old Gascon, Montaigne, with his usual sagacity, 
observes of systems of conduct generally, that a young man 
ought sometimes " to cross his own rules" to awake his 
vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty; " for 
there is no course of life so weak as that which is carried 
on by rule and discipline." The reader of Dickens will 
remember the old clock at Dr. Blimber's, whose monotonous 
beat rapped every second on the head as soon as it was 
born, killing it stone-dead on the spot. Like this, we fear, 
is the murderous clock-work of many human lives. 



TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 



T~\0 we need more public speakers in this country? We 
-*-^ ask the question because we often see paragraphs 
going the rounds of the press, advising fathers to teach 
their boys to "spout' 1 as a means of getting on in the 
world, considering the countless occasions on which, in this 
country, a man is called to address his fellows. Moreover, 
we are reminded that the speaking class par eminence, — 
that is, the lawyers, — usually number nine-tenths of the 
United States Congress. 

There is force in these suggestions; yet we are fully of 
the opinion that the advice is mischievous; that, instead of 
swelling the number of public speakers in this country, it 
would be a mercy to the community, and should be the 
solicitude of every one having the control of boys, to 
diminish it. This running at the mouth has become a 
terrible epidemic, and we believe that the health of the 
body politic demands that it should be checked rather than 
encouraged. The facility for extempore speaking which 
dazzles so many persons, begets self-conceit and a thirst for 
public notice, and tempts thousands of our young men to 
seek temporary notoriety at the expense of a solid and 
enduring reputation. Instead of cultivating and disciplin- 
ing their brains, storing their minds with the hived wisdom 
of the ages, and, above all, acquiring that most valuable 
and important of all arts, the art of thinking consecutively 
and with effect, they study clap-trap and sensational 



280 TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 

oratory, — the art of producing instantaneous and ephem- 
eral, instead of deep and lasting effects. Habits of speak- 
ing thus formed speedily react on the habits of thinking, 
and instead of weighing questions carefully and trying to 
ascertain their merits, young men view them only as 
pegs upon which to hang speeches. An easy utterance, 
a lively verbosity, a knack of stinging invective, and a 
command of that piquant ridicule which always brings 
down the house, soon come to be preferred to the pro- 
foundest knowledge, the largest grasp of mind, and the 
most thorough comprehension of a subject, which, owing 
to the very embarras des richesses, hems and stammers in 
trying to wreak itself upon expression. 

There is hardly any gift so dangerous or so worthless 
as what is vulgarly termed eloquence. The French have 
rightly characterized it as the flux de bouche, — a mental 
diarrhoea. It is a mistake to suppose that it is difficult 
to acquire the faculty of fluent speaking; almost any man 
can succeed who will try often, and who can harden him- 
self against the mortification of frequent failures. Com- 
plete self-possession and a ready flow of language may thus 
be acquired mechanically; but it will be the self-possession 
of ignorance, and the fluency of comparative emptiness. 
Such a habit may teach him something of arrangement, 
and a few of the simplest methods of making an impres- 
sion; but, as Lord Brougham has said, "his diction is sure 
to be much worse than if he never made the attempt. 
Such a speaker is never in want of a word, and hardly 
ever has one that is worth having." The truth is, full 
men are seldom fluent. Washington seldom spoke in 
public, and when he did, it was in 'a few pointed sentences, 
delivered in an easy, conversational way. In the conven- 



TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 281 

tion that framed the Constitution of the United States he 
made but two speeches, of a few words each; yet the con- 
vention acknowledged the master spirit, and it is said that 
but for the thirty words of his first speech, the Constitution 
would have been rejected by the people. Neither Franklin 
nor Jefferson had " the gift of gab," though the one wrote 
the Declaration of Independence, and the other '•' snatched 
the lightning from the skies and the sceptre from tyrants." 
Though silent and slow-tongued, each in the weightiest 
debate was effective, because he spoke tersely and from a 
full mind, and drove a nail home with every blow. The 
latter changed the messages of the Executive to Congress 
from oral to written discourses, because of his aversion to 
public speaking. President Jackson was as tongue-tied as 
Grant. Napoleon said that his greatest difficulty in ruling- 
was in finding men of deeds rather than of words. When 
asked how he maintained his influence over his superiors in 
age and experience when he commanded in Italy, he said, 
" By reserve." Moltke is said to be silent in eight lan- 
guages. He rarely speaks, except in the crash of solid 
shot and the shriek of the angry shell. When the Creator 
was to choose a man for the greatest work ever done in 
this world, it was Moses, the man "slow of speech," and 
not Aaron, the man who could " speak well," that He 
commissioned. It was said of Col. John Allen, a Kentucky 
jurist, that he knew more than he could say ; and of the 
noted Isham Talbot, whose tongue ran like a flutter-mill, 
that he said more than he knew. 

The most convincing speakers have been niggard of 
their words. The reason why the classic orators of an- 
tiquity spoke with such terseness and condensed energy, 
is that they turned over their subjects long and deeply, 
12* 



282 TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 

and made the pen a constant auxiliary of the tongue. 
By this double means — the cogitatio et commentatio, as 
Cicero calls it, added to the assidua ac diligens scriptura, — 
they laid up in the arsenal of the memory a supply of 
weapons for any emergency that might arise; and the 
sentences thus turned over and over in the laboratory of 
thought, and submitted to criticism and revision by being 
embodied in written composition, were immeasurably more 
weighty and effective than those which in our day are 
thrown off in the hurry of debate, when there is no time 
to pause for the best thoughts and the most pregnant 
and pointed expression. 

It is said that the Germans, long-winded as they are in 
their books, and though they will endure any amount of 
printed matter, unappalled by size of volume, number of 
pages, or closeness of type, will not tolerate a long speech 
out of a lecture-room. A ten-minutes' harangue is an 
exception; one of an hour's length is a phenomenon; one 
of two hours never dreamed of; and as for the feat of 
speaking four or five hours consecutively, which has been 
achieved by some leathern-lunged American politicians, it 
is looked upon as an impossibility, or, if credited on evi- 
dence too 'positive to doubt, is ranked with rope-dancing, 
balancing one's self heels upward on the point of a steeple, 
or similar eccentric and useless performances to which men 
sometimes pervert their powers. 

The weightiest men in the British Parliament have ever 
been slow of speech. For a speaker who has something to 
say, John Bull has' an exhaustless patience; but for mere 
loquacity he has an unmitigated contempt. Hemming and 
hawing, — stammering, — want of tact, — poverty of diction, 
— all are borne with patience, so long as the hearers 



TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 283 

believe that the speaker has some special knowledge, some 
telling fact, some wise suggestion, which he will contrive 
to get out, if he is suffered to take his own time and way. 
But the instant a suspicion arises that he is talking " for 
buncombe,'" — that he is trying to dazzle his hearers with 
oratorical pyrotechnics, — that he is, in short, vox et preterea 
nihil, — they give reins to their indignation, and cough him 
down without mercy. So far is this carried, that a traveler 
tells us that, in the House of Commons, it is almost unpar- 
liamentary to be fluent, — to speak right on, without hem- 
ming and hawing; and quite unlordly, because smelling 
of a professional aptitude, to march through a long sentence 
without losing the way, — without stumbling over Lindley 
Murray and possibly the Queen herself, — and without the 
speaker coming out of the sentence at last nearly where he 
went in. The most skilful debaters in that body, instead 
of spinning out their words like a juggler blowing endless 
ribbons from his mouth, cultivate a prudent reticence. . 
Like Anthony, they are plain, blunt men. They shrink 
from antithesis, and epigram, and point, and regard fluency 
as a debater's most dangerous snare. Nor is this opinion 
ill- grounded. Its truth was strikingly illustrated a few 
years ago by the comparative success of that, brilliant par- 
liamentary orator, Mr. Horsman, and Lord Palmerston. It 
was remarked that the very brilliancy of Mr. Horsman 
converted his hearers into hostile critics, piquing themselves 
upon their skill in seeing through the magic colors in which 
his genius shrouded the truth ; whereas Lord Palmerston's 
dexterous hemming and hawing only made his audience 
sympathetically anxious to help the struggle of the honest 
advocate of a sound cause against the disadvantages of his 
own oratorical defects. 



284 TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 

If an Englishman would succeed as a speaker, he first 
seeks to store his mind with facts, and, before studying 
oratorical tricks and arts, he tries by patient study and 
profound meditation to master the subjects upon which 
there is a demand for knowledge. Not till he has honestly 
worked out a problem by brooding over it like a hen over 
her eggs, does he prepare to lay the solution of it before 
the public. What is the secret of Mr. Bright's oratorical 
power? Practice in debating clubs? No; but the habits 
of keen observation and reflection fostered by his public 
and private life, — the constant claims on ease and readiness 
caused by a political canvass, the demand on the resources 
of practical comment and. sagacious observation made at 
the hustings or in the House of Commons. It is because 
he has brooded for years in solitude over the subjects on 
which he has delivered himself with so much fire, that his 
mind has acquired that depth of passion, earnestness, and 
force which the playful and facile contests of the college 
debating society would only have diluted and diminished. 
In short, oratory is the weapon of an athlete, and it can 
never be wielded to any purpose by a mere stripling. The 
heroes of collegiate discussions gain intellectual agility, 
readiness, facility; but this suppleness of mind is too often 
gained at the expense of higher and more sterling qualities, 
and especially of that unity of personal character which is 
one of the great sources of impressiveness. It takes serious 
business and real purpose to train the orator; and if the 
aspirant begins his career too early, the strain is too great 
for the system that is to support it, — the tax eats into the 
capital, — the practice, in Shakespeare's words, 

•■ Lays on such burdens as to bear them 
The back is sacrifice to the load." 



TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 285 

College life and college debating-clubs, it has been 
truly said, give brightness, alertness, wit, candor, fair- 
ness, grace, to the intellects which they discipline; but 
they do not give, they rather take away, that effect of 
intensity and massiveness, that subduing and overpower- 
ing impressiveness which come of brooding thought and 
purpose, — which come, that is., of the tone of mind which 
has not accustomed itself to look at questions with other 
men's eyes. It is because he cares less for manner than 
for matter, — less to be quick and fluent than to be strong 
and full, — because he thinks long and deeply on the 
subject which he speaks upon, — that the English orator 
is weightier and more impressive than the American. 
The English care most for the foundation of their 
speeches; we, for the superstructure. We fight splendidly 
in debate, but it is to win or perish, and we exhaust 
ourselves by a single effort. They have less dash and 
brilliancy, but great reserved force, and renew the attack 
to-morrow with as much vigor as at the first onset. It 
has been justly said that " if the maiden speeches of 
some of England's most brilliant and polished debaters 
have been downright failures, it has been owing to inex- 
perience, not to the lack of solid information, — to want 
of practice in the tricks and mechanical devices of oratory, 
and in no degree to the absence of convictions or sound 
thought." 

But, says some one, is it then of no importance to 
cultivate the faculty of speech? Do not men of fine 
abilities sacrifice half their power and influence by not 
learning the art of speaking well in public? Is it not 
painful to see a man who has spent years in self-culture, 
standing dumb as a heathen oracle, or with his intellect 



286 TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 

smitten with indescribable confusion, the moment he opens 
his lips in public, for lack of a few happy sentences in 
which to embody his thoughts? Yes; but it is not neces- 
sary to join a debating club, or to thrust one's self for- 
ward as a speaker in all assemblies, in order to become 
a good public speaker. Every time one opens his lips in 
society, he has an opportunity to acquire and strengthen 
the habit of giving clear and forcible utterance to his 
thoughts. Instead, then, of bidding our young men 
" spout," we would bid them read widely, think deeply, 
reason logically, and act sensibly. We would with Richter 
exhort them never to speak on a subject till they have read 
themselves full upon it, and never to read upon a subject 
till they have thought themselves hungry upon it. When 
a sensible and thoughtful man has anything to say, he will 
always find a way of saying it, when circumstances require 
him to speak. On the other hand, if a young man begins 
spouting on all occasions, while his faculties are yet imma- 
ture, and his knowledge scanty, crude, and ill-arranged, he 
will be almost sure to retain through life a fatal facility for 
pouring forth ill-digested thoughts in polished periods, and 
a hatred for cautious reflection. We have rarely known 
a fluent speaker who said things that stuck like burrs in 
the memory; but we have heard hesitating and artless 
talkers who have blurted out the most original, the deepest 
and the most pregnant things which we have cared to 
remember. No, — we want no more spouting. We want 
thought, and taste, and brevity, and that Doric simplicity 
of style which is so nearly allied to the highest and most 
effective eloquence. 



A FORGOTTEN WIT. 



WHAT is more uncertain than literary fame? The 
history of literature shows that, if it is one of the 
most enviable of human possessions, it is at the same 
time one of the most fleeting. There is scarcely any- 
thing about which one can prophesy with so little cer- 
tainty as concerning the future fame of an author who 
is now the pet or favorite of the reading world. Fifty 
years ago Byron was the poetic idol of the public; and 
Macaulay did not exaggerate when he said that all the 
readers of verse in England, — nay, in Europe, — hastened 
to sit at his feet. Now, instead of having his thousands 
of worshipers, who drink gin ceaselessly, and strive, in 
turned-down collars, to look Conrad-like and misanthropic, 
he is barely a power in literature. Who reads Crabbe now, 
or Southey, or Moore? Yet Crabbe, the " Pope in worsted 
stockings," was so famous in his day as to create a decided 
sensation at the hotel where he stayed on visiting London; 
Southey, who, as a poet, is remembered to-day only by 
a few pieces and passages which he himself pronounced 
clap-trap, believed that his ponderous epics would be im- 
mortal; and Moore, whose songs were sung in a thousand 
drawing-rooms, might well have believed that they, at 
least, would not be ephemeridae. Again, what reader of 
to-day has toiled through the seven volumes of Richard- 
son's "Pamela"; or how many have ever heard the name 
of "Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison"? Yet these 

287 



288 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 

were the novels which held our great-grandmothers spell- 
bound, — which were more popular than are the tales of 
Dickens or Miss Evans now. Rousseau hung over Richard- 
son's pages with rapture; and Diderot declared that, if 
forced to sell his books, he would never part with these, 
which he ranked with the productions of Moses, Homer, 
Euripides, and Sophocles. Who reads Cleveland now, or 
" the great Churchill," or Hayley, or Dr. Darwin, or Beattie's 
prose or poetry, or " Fitzosbofne's Letters,' 1 which reached 
its eightieth edition, or Blair's Sermons, which sold in 
their day like Robertson's Sermons and " Ecce Homo " 
in ours? These, and a thousand other cases that might 
be cited, show that the highest contemporary fame is no 
guarantee of immortality. The suddenness with which an 
author who has been puffed into the loftiest elevation is 
sometimes hurled into the gulf of forgetfulness reminds 
one of the vicissitudes that befell Milton's Satan in his 
flight through chaos: 

" His sail-broad vans 
He spreads for flight, and, in the surging smoke 
Uplifted, spurns the ground; thence, many a league, 
As in a cloudy chair, ascending, rides 

Audacious 

.... All unawares, 

Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops 

Ten thousand fathoms deep." 

These reflections have been provoked by a perusal of 
the writings of Chamfort, of which a new edition was pub- 
lished a few years ago in Paris. Though a leading jour- 
nalist in the French Revolution, he is now almost forgotten 
in Europe, while few persons in America have even heard 
of his name. Sebastian Roch Nicholas Chamfort was born 
in 1741, near Clermont, in Auvergne. He was a natural 



A FORGOTTEN WIT. ' 289 

son, and had the quickness of parts which the proverb 
ascribes to such children. He never knew who his father 
was. His mother, who was a dame de compagnie, came to 
Paris to hide her shame, and there found friends and 
protectors, through whose influence he found a boursier's 
place at the College of the Grassins. Bather a dull scholar 
at first, he at last shone forth brilliantly, and in his third 
year this filius nullius, this " child of misery, baptized in 
tears," carried off the five grand prizes of the University. 
These triumphs determined his calling; he chose letters. 
At first he tried to get employment from the journals 
and booksellers, but failed, and would have starved had 
not a young Abbe paid him a louis a week for writing 
sermons. He next became a tutor; then secretary to a 
rich citizen of Liege, whom he followed across the Rhine; 
but they soon quarreled, and Chamfort returned to Paris, 
saying that " the thing in the world for which he was 
least fitted was to be a German." An indifferent comedy, 
which had some success, and the winning of a prize at 
the Academy, and another at the Academy of Marseilles 
for an Eloge on La Fontaine, introduced him into society, 
where his good looks, his aplomb, and his ready and 
brilliant wit, soon made him a favorite. Men and women 
of rank now sought him and doated on him. That they 
did not for a moment suspect the intensity of pride and 
the rage for equality which slumbered in his heart, is not 
strange; for far keener observers were deceived than the 
great ladies who thus caressed him. When he was elected 
an Academician, Rivarol said that he was "like a bit of 
lily- of- the- valley in a bouquet of poppies." The lily-of- 
the-valley exhaled strange and deadly poisons with its 
perfume. 

13 



200 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 

Gradually the gay and dissipated life which Cham-fort 
led told upon his health. He went from watering-place 
to watering-place, among others to Spa and Bareges, but 
with little benefit. He lost the vigor and good looks 
which led the Princess Of Craon to say of him, " He looks 
only an Adonis, but he is a Hercules"; but his position 
was assured. Places and pensions were showered upon 
him. At Bareges, four ladies fell in love with him, 
among them Madame de Grammont and Madame de 
Choiseul, — " in reality/' wrote Mdlle. Lespinasse to a 
friend, " four friends, who ea^ch of them loved him with 
all the strength of four," and she adds, " he is very well 
pleased, and tries his best to be modest/' About this 
time he wrote his traged}^ of " Mustapha et Zeanger," a 
play which has been much praised for its purity of style 
and sweetness of sentiment, — which Sainte-Beuve notes as 
somewhat singular in a tragedy, and in an author like 
Chamfort; "he reserved," adds the critic, "all his sweet- 
ness for his tragedies. He shows himself a feeble disciple 
of Racine in his Bajazet, and of Voltaire in Zaire" Marie 
Antoinette, nattered by some allusions to herself in one of 
his tragedies, gave him a pension of one thousand two 
hundred livres. The Prince of Conde also offered him the 
post of Secretaire des Commandements. In spite of these 
successes, however, envy, malice, and uncharitableness con- 
tinued to gnaw at his heart. His acrid sayings about 
those with whom he lived 1aurn, it has been well said, the 
very paper on which they are written. His reply to 
Rulhiere, itself stinging enough, is among the mildest of 
them. " I have committed," said the wit and historian, 
"but one wickedness in my life." " When, will it end?" 
asked Chamfort. Resigning his secretaryship in a fit of 



A FORGOTTEN WIT. 291 

spleen and misanthropy, he retired to Auteuil, saying, "It 
is not with the living, but with the dead, one should com- 
mune," meaning, of course, with books. His communion 
had hardly begun, before, at the dangerous age of forty. 
he fell in love with the Duchess of Maine, a beauty who 
counted eight-and-forty winters. They married and lived 
together but a few months, when she died, and her hus- 
band relapsed into a profound melancholy. The secret of 
his unhappiness at this time was his inaction and his ste- 
rility. Nothing, as Sainte-Beuve truly observes, is so con- 
soling to the man of letters as to produce; nothing better 
reconciles him with others and with himself. The excessive 
pleasures in which Chamfort had indulged, had rapidly 
destroyed his health and his youth. " I have destroyed my 
passions," he said. " pretty much as a violent man kills his 
horse, not being able to govern him." Made an Acade- 
mician, he delivered on the occasion a brilliant discourse, 
and immediately after published a " Discourse against Acad- 
emies." Occasionally he went to Court, where the Queen, 
Marie Antoinette, once said to him: " Do you know, M. de 
Chamfort. that you pleased all the world at Versailles, not 
by your wit, but in spite of it?" "The reason is easy to 
find." replied the sparkling satirist; "at Versailles I learn 
with resignation many things I know from people who are 
completely ignorant of them." 

When the Revolution burst forth, Chamfort's friendship 
was sought by Mirabeau. The influence he soon had with 
the great Tribune is the highest proof of his sagacity and 
power. In his letters to Chamfort, Mirabeau recognizes 
him as not only his dearest and most sympathetic, but as 
his most suggestive and inspiring friend. " I cannot deny 
myself the pleasure," said Mirabeau to him, " of rubbing 



292 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 

the most electric head I have ever known. There is hardly 
a day I do not find myself saying, 'Cham fort froncerait le 
sowcil; ne faisons pas, n'e'crivons pas cela' ; or, on the 
other hand, 'Chamfort sera content.' " In the nnion of the 
two men there was just that blending of opposite qualities 
which is essential to the strongest friendship. Delicacy, 
neatness, subtlety, finesse, characterized the one; force, im- 
petuosity, fury, sensibility, predominated in the other, — 
each supplementing the other's defects. Throwing himself 
into the revolutionary struggles, Chamfort defended the 
new doctrine with heart, mind, tongue, and pen; and, in 
the enthusiasm of the hour, though his whole fortune was 
in pensions, vindicated the decree that suppressed them. 
For a time he was one of the most active and powerful 
revolutionary journalists: but, at last, as the Reign of 
Terror grew darker, he was shocked and disgusted by its 
atrocities, and began to denounce the reigning furies in 
vehement terms. Indignant at the mockery of the words 
" Fraternity " and "Liberty" traced on all the walls, he 
translated them thus: "Be my brother, or I kill thee.'* 
He used to liken the fraternity of the revolutionary cut- 
throats to that of Cain and Abel. Finally he was denounced 
by an employe in the National Library, of which he had 
been made one of the Librarians by Roland, and was 
hurried to prison. Soon after he was released: but, find- 
ing himself "shadowed" by a gendarme, he mentally swore 
that he would die rather than go back to the dungeon. 
Being seized again by the myrmidons of power, he tried 
first to shoot, then to stab himself, but only succeeded in 
inflicting ugly wounds. " You see what it is to be mal- 
adroit in the use of one's hands, " he exclaimed; "one can- 
not even kill one's self to escape the pangs of tyranny.*' 



A FORGOTTEX WIT. 293 

In spite of a ball in his head, the loss of one eye, and 
other mutilations, he recovered, but only to live for a 
brief time, dying on the 13th of April, 1793, in the fifty- 
second year of his age. It was still the Reign of Terror, 
and but three friends dared to follow him to the tomb. 
It was his opinion to the last, that the pistol-ball, with 
which he had attempted to blow out his brains, was still 
in his head. "Je sens," said he, k ' que la balle est reste 
dans ma tete; Us nHront pas Vy chercher." 

Chateaubriand, describing the personal appearance of 
Chamfort, says that " he was pale-faced and of a delicate com- 
plexion. His blue eye, occasionally cold and veiled when 
unexcited, sparkled and flashed with fire when he became 
animated. His slightly open nostrils gave to his counte- 
nance an expression of energetic sensibility. His voice 
was flexible, and its modulations followed the movements 
of his soul; but in the last days of my sojourn at Paris, 
it had acquired some asperity, and one detected in it the 
agitated and imperious accent of the factions." 

The best edition of Chamfort for the English reader 
is that edited by Arsene Houssaye, which contains his 
choicest pieces, omitting all of temporary interest. Few 
books contain a greater amount of sparkling wit, delicate 
satire, and worldly wisdom, than is condensed in this 
small volume. Mingling much with the world, Chamfort 
brought into it a spirit of observation so ingenious and 
penetrating that the shrewdest and most sagacious of his 
contemporaries deemed him almost unerring and miracu- 
lous in his judgments. Many sayings which are now on 
everybody's lips first fell from his lips or pen. It was 
he who first divided our friends into "those who love us, 
those who are indifferent to us, and those who hate us." 



294 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 

It was he, not Talleyrand, who said, "Revolutions are 
not made with rose-water." It was he who gave to the 
French armies, as they marched into Belgium, the motto, 
" War to the castle? peace to the cottage." It was Cham- 
fort, too, that furnished the Abb6-Sieyes with the memora- 
ble closing words of his pamphlet: "What is the Third 
Estate? All. What has it? Nothing." Cham-fort was 
accustomed to write out daily, on little bits of paper, the 
results of his observations and reflections condensed into 
maxims; and these mots, carefully polished and sharpened, 
with the anecdotes he had picked up in the great world 
among professional men, artists, and men of letters, form 
the most brilliant and attractive part of his writings. 
The following, selected almost at random, are fair speci- 
mens of the whole: 

" The public, the public, how many fools does it take to make a 
public'/" 

" The meuace of a neglected cold is for the doctors that which purga- 
tory is for the priests.— a mine of wealth." 

"'You yawn.' said a lady to her husband. -My dear friend.'' said the 
husband, ' husband and wife are but one. and when I am alone I become 
weary.' " 

"To despise money is to dethrone a king; U y a du ragout." 

"The majority of nobles recall their ancestors pretty much as an Italian 
cicerone recalls Cicero." 

" Madame de Tencin, with the suavest manners in the world, was an 
unprincipled woman, capable of anything. On one occasion, a friend was 
praising her gentleness. u Aye, aye,' said the Abbe Imblet. -if she had any 
object whatever in poisoning you, undoubtedly she would choose the sweetest 
and least disagreeable poison in the world.'" 

" I heard one day a devotee, speaking against people who discuss articles 
of faith, say naivement: ' Gentlemen, a true Christian never examines what, 
he is ordered to believe. It is with that as with a bitter pill ; if you chew it, 
you will never be able to swallow it.' " 

"The most utterly lost of all days is that on which you have not once 
laughed." 

•■ Society is composed of two great classes,— those who have more din- 
ners than appetites, and those who have more appetites than dinners." 



A FORGOTTEN WIT. 295 

"•Madame de Talmont, seeing M. de Richelieu, instead of lavishing atten- 
tion on herself, paying court to Madame Brionne. a very pretty woman with- 
out the least mind, said to him, 'Marshal, you are not blind, but I believe 
you are a little deaf.' " 

44 A lady, who shall be nameless, was at the representation of 4 Merope. 
and did not shed a tear. Everybody was surprised; perceiving which the 
lady said, 'I could indeed have wept, but I am engaged out to-night to 
supper.' " 

"L'Eclure used to relate, that, when quite a young man, and without a 
fortune, arriving at Luneville. he obtained the place of dentist to King Stan- 
islaus on the very day on which the king lost his last tooth." 

"A lady aged ninety said to Foutenelle. at ninety-five: 'Death has for- 
gotten us.' 'Silence! not a word!' said Fontenelle. placing his finger upon 
his mouth." 

"A person chided M." (Chamfort himself) "upon his taste for solitude. 
Me replied: It is because I am more accustomed to my own faults than 
to those of another person.' " 

"Man arrives a novice at every age of life." 

" Nature, in loading us with so much misery, and in giving us an invin- 
cible attachment to life, seems to have dealt with man like an incendiary who 
sets our house on fire after having posted sentinels at our door. The danger 
must be very great to oblige us to leap out of the window." 

44 M. de Lassay. a very pleasant man, but who had a great knowledge of 
society, said that it would be necessary to swallow a toad every morning, in 
order not to find anything disgusting the rest of the day, when one has to 
spend it in the world." 

" A certain person, who shall be nameless, had been, for thirty years, in 
the habit of passing his evenings at Madame H's. At length his wife died. 
People thought he would marry the lady whose house he frequented, and his 
best friends encouraged him to perpetrate the deed. He refused, saying, "In 
that case, my friends, where should I find a house of refuge to pass my even- 
ings'?" 

- People give ten-guinea dinners to entertain those for whose good diges- 
tion of the expensive dinner they would not give a groat." 

41 France is a country in which it is always necessary to display one's vices, 
and always dangerous to disclose one's virtues." 

These sayings, so acrid and corrosive, are a fair speci- 
men of what a witty French writer has called let tenuilles 
mordantes de Chamfort. The majority of those relating 
to society apply only to the great world in which he 
lived, the society of the great; they wholly fail to char- 
acterize the less factitious society in which the natural 



296 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 

sentiments are not abolished. It was because he lived 
too long in high life, that theatre of unequal struggles, 
of trickery, and of vanity, — because he passed too many 
years in refined society, and saw its hollowness, selfish- 
ness and dissimulation, — that he has given us so many 
pictures of hypocrisy and insincerity, and was able to 
utter his famous saying: "I have been led there by de- 
grees. In living and in seeing men, the heart must break 
or be bronzed (se brise ou se bronze). Chamfort had one of 
those unfortunate natures, which, ignorant of the happy 
alchemy which converts even gall and wormwood into 
honey, find bitterness in everything, and echo the senti- 
ment of the poet, — 

"La rose a des poisons qu'on finit par trouver." 

He confesses, however, to have had in his life two 
years of happiness, and six months of perfect felicity. 
He had retired to the country with a female friend 
older than himself, but with whom he felt himself in 
perfect sympathy of sentiment and of thought. He lost 
her, and appears to have buried with her the remains of 
his heart. He never speaks of her but in terms that 
mark a profound sadness: 

'When my heart has need of tenderness, I recall the friends whom I have 
lost, women of whom death has robbed me. I inhabit their grave; I send my 
soul to wander about theirs. Alas! I have three tombs." 

In estimating many of his maxims we must not forget 
that they come from a man who never had a family, who 
was not softened by its endearments, ni en remontant ni 
en descendant, who had no father, and who, in his turn, 
never wished to be one. "Consulting reason only," he 
again and again asks, ''what man would wish to be a 
father?" "I will not marry," he says again, "for fear 



A FORGOTTEN WIT. 297 

of having a son to resemble me. Yes, for fear of having 
a. son who, being poor like myself, may know not how to 
.lie. or to natter, or to creep, and may have to undergo 
the same trials as myself." 

Chamfort did nothing continuously; he has left no 
book as a monument of his powers. He left others to 
execute important enterprises, and was content to supply 
the stimulus. His forte, his genius, lay in summing up a 
situation, a counsel, a general impression, in a single word. 
His influence upon French society was unquestionable, 
but it was exercised wholly in conversation, in sallies of 
wit, in those sparkling sayings " which make one (a thing 
so rare) laugh and think at the same time.' 1 It is in 
the Maximes et Pensees, which form the latter half of 
Houssaye's edition of his remains, that we must look for 
the quintessence of this piquant and spirituel writer. 
Whether he deserves a literary resurrection, the reader 
can judge. That his »genius was quite as original and 
brilliant as that of many an author whom the world does 
'" not willingly let die," we think is clear. That he was 
especially a keen observer of men, the volume we have 
quoted from abundantly proves. The court, the camp, the 
city, the exchange, the theatres, the churches, — all the 
classes, ranks, and conditions of society, — pass in review 
in his pictured pages, and reveal themselves to us " in 
their habit as they lived." 

Will it be said that he was cynical, — that his wit 
was dry, caustic, and sardonic? So was Swift's and 
Rochefoucauld's. Are there occasional passages in his 
writings that one would not like to read aloud? Yes: 
but are there not more such in Shakspeare, Sterne, Pope, 
and Montaigne? That Chamfort would have produced 



298 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 

works more worthy of his genius if his energies had not 
been drained by the exhausting labors of journalism, we 
cannot doubt. We all know the effects of these labors, 
when ceaseless and engrossing, upon even the most lav- 
ishly-endowed writer. He becomes at last a hack thinker 
and a loose writer; he is a race-horse in the shafts of 
an omnibus, Aaron's beard never would have come down 
to us in history, had he been in the habit of shaving- 
daily; and had Montaigne and Pascal lived in our day, 
the immortal " Essays " might have dwindled into a 
Moniteur correspondence, and the ''Provincial Letters' 1 
might have been let off in squibs to fizz and sparkle 
through fifty-two weeks in Charivari. Granting all that 
can be said in disparagement of Chamfort, — that he was 
sour and misanthropical; that his genius had little now: 
that his wit was disproportionate to his other gifts; that 
he lacked that highest wisdom which only goodness can 
give, and was blunt and vehement where a milder and 
more courteous expression of his opinions would have 
better insured their reception, — we still think his works 
should be kept from the " moth and worm, and mouldering 
hand of time." We believe with Sainte-Beuve, that, in 
spite of his faults, Chamfort will continue to be classed in 
the front rank of those who have managed la saillie fran- 
ca ise with the most dexterity and boldness. Too sickly and 
too irritable to deserve ever to obtain a place in the 
series of true moralists, his name will remain attached to 
a number of concise, sharp, vibrating, and picturesque 
sayings, which pique the attention, and which fix them- 
selves like barbed arrows in the memory. At the same 
time, however, we would say to all his readers, in the 
words of the same critic: " Mefiez-vous, pourtant! je chains 
qu'il n'y ait toujours un peu d'arsenic au fond." 



ARE WE ANGLO-SAXON? 



" ~1\ /FY children," Dr. Johnson used to say to his friends, 
_1_?_J_ « deliver yourselves from cant/' Every age has 
its cant, which, in some of the thousand forms of the thing, 
is the prevailing rage. That of our own time is Anglo- 
Saxon glorification. Not a day passes, but we read in 
print, or hear from the platform, the eternal, hackneyed 
boasting about our ' ; manifest destiny,'' — the same weari- 
some ding-dong about the Anglo-Saxon energy, and the 
rapidity with which the race is belting the globe, and 
supplanting the laws, manners, and customs of every 
other people. This cant has been echoed and re-echoed, 
— in newspaper articles, stump speeches, Congressional 
harangues, and even in works on ethnology, — till it has 
become a nuisance. We are as sick of it as ever Dr. 
Johnson was of the everlasting " Second Punic War. 1 ' 
"Who will deliver me from the Greeks and Romans?" 
cried in agony the classic- ridden Frenchman. " Who will 
deliver us from the Anglo-Saxon? " despairingly cry we. 
There are in the United States some six or eight 
millions of people who are descended from the Anglo- 
Saxons, — and that is probably all. That population is to 
be found principally in New England, side by side with 
men of every clime and land; not a very stupendous 
item, is it, out of some forty- two millions of men, women, 
and children, who think and toil between the St. Croix 
River and the Bay of San Francisco? True, these forty- 

299 



300 ARE WE AKGLO-SAXON? 

two millions all, or nine-tenths of them, speak the 
language of Shakspeare and Bacon; but this no more 
proves them the descendants of that race which was first 
whipped by a few Scandinavian filibusters, and afterward 
thrashed, held by the throats, and ruled with a rod of 
iron when they complained, for century after century, by a 
handful of Normans, than the wearing of woolen proves a 
man a sheep, or drinking lager beer proves him a Dutch- 
man. 

Who are the men who have built up this nation and 
made it the great republic it is? Are they all, or nearly 
all, of Anglo-Saxon birth or descent? Not to speak of 
the Swiss, the Huguenots, the Dutch, and other minor 
peoples, let us look at the Irish contingent to American 
greatness. From the very first settlement of the country, 
in field and street, at the plow, in the Senate, and on 
the battle-field, Irish energy was represented. Maryland 
and South Carolina were largely peopled by Hibernians. 
Maine, New Hampshire, and Kentucky received many 
Irish emigrants. During the first half of the last cen- 
tury, the emigration from, Ireland to this country was 
not less than a quarter of a million. When our fore- 
fathers threw off the British yoke, the Irish formed a 
sixth or seventh of the whole population, and one-fourth 
of all the commissioned officers in the army and navy 
were of Irish descent. The first general officer killed in 
battle, the first officer of artillery appointed, the first 
Commodore commissioned, the first victor to whom the 
British flag was struck at sea, and the first officer who 
surprised a fort by land, were Irishmen; and with such 
enthusiasm did the emigrants from " the Green Isle " 
espouse the cause of liberty, that Lord Mountjoy declared 



ARE WE ANGLO-SAXO"^? 801 

in Parliament, "You lost America by the Irish." We 
will not speak of the physical development of America, 
to which two generations of Irish laborers have chiefly 
contributed, but for the constant supply of which the 
buffalo might still be browsing in the Genesee Valley, 
and " Forty-second street " be " out of town " (speaking 
Hibemice) in New York; we will confine ourselves to the 
men of brain who have leavened the mass of bone and 
sinew by which our material prosperity has been worked 
out. Who were the Carrolls, the Rutledges, the Fitzsim- 
mons, and the McKeans, of the Revolution? — whence 
came Andrew Jackson, Robert Emmet, J. C. Calhoun, and 
McDuffie, of a later day? — whence the projector of the 
Erie Canal, the inventor of the first steamboat, and the 
builder of the first American railroad? — whence two of 
our leading sculptors, Powers and Crawford? — whence 
our most distinguished political economist, Carey? — 
whence the Hero of Winchester, whom all the people of 
the North have delighted to honor? They were all Irish 
by birth or descent. 

Even to the Welsh element in our population, our 
country is indebted in no small degree for its prosperity. 
Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, eighteen 
had Welsh blood in their veins, and among them were 
Samuel Adams, John Adams, Stephen Hopkins, Francis 
Hopkinson, Robert Morris, B. Gwinnett, Thomas Jefferson, 
Benjamin Harrison, -Richard H. Lee, and Francis H. Lee. 
Among our Revolutionary Generals, the brave Montgom- 
ery, who fell at Quebec, " Mad " Anthony Wayne, the fiery 
Ethan Allen, and David Morgan, together with Charles 
Lee, John Cadwallader, and many others, were of Welsh 
blood; and so were six of our Presidents, viz.: John 



302 ARE AVE AXGLO-SAXOX? 

Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, Harrison, and 
Buchanan. We may add that President Grant, to whom 
the Republic is indebted more than to any other man since 
Washington, is not of Anglo-Saxon descent, but of Nor- 
man, via Scotland. 

If, leaving history, we look to the moral and physio- 
logical traits of the American people, we shall find them 
clearly distinguished from those of the Anglo-Saxons. The 
English people and the American differ widely in mind, 
feeling, temper, and manners ; and these differences may be 
traced to the characteristics of nations who have mingled 
the stream of their life with the current derived from Eng- 
land. We have far quicker sensibilities than the English, 
both of affection and of wrath, being kindlier in our gentle 
mood, and more fiery when irritated. Along with this 
inflammable temper, we have an originality of invention, 
a discursiveness of inquiry, a keen quest of novelty, a 
fertility of expedients, a contempt for antiquated laws, 
customs, and precedents, which strikingly contrast with 
the timidity and caution, the conservative and creeping 
policy of the English. 

How we came to be infected by the Anglo-Saxon 
mania, it would be hard to tell. Even in England it is 
ridiculous enough; but there it is beginning to be laughed 
at by men of sense, who perceive the absurdity of English- 
men claiming to be Anglo-Saxons, when there is no such 
race in existence, and never was. Those who echo this 
boast, should read Defoe's " True-born Englishman," in 
which, at a time when it was customary to denounce 
King William as " a foreigner," the author was at pains 
to instruct his countrymen how many mongrel races had 
conspired to form " that vain, ill-natured thing, an Eng- 



ARK WE ANGLO-SAXON"? 303 

lishman,'' and showed in limping verse, but unanswerable 
logic, that 

•'A True-born Englishman's a contradiction — 
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction; 
A metaphor invented to express 
A man akin to all the universe." 

Anything more motley and heterogeneous than the 
Anglo-Saxon blood, even before the Norman invasion, 
made up, as it was, from the veins of Britons, Romans. 
Saxons, Picts, Scots, and Danes, it would be hard to con- 
ceive. It began with the Celtic, of which it is a dilution, 
— that very Celtic with which certain writers are fond 
of telling us it is in deadly antagonism and enmity; next 
comes the Roman blood, — a blood shared, more or less, 
by every people in Southern and Western Europe, to say 
nothing of parts of Asia and Africa, — and which, we 
know, was derived from a mingling together of all the 
races of ancient Italy and the ancient world; and then 
follows the blood of the Picts and Scots, the Jutes, Frisians. 
Angles, and Saxons, the Danes, and, last of all, the Normans, 
who, as Dr. Latham says, were, from first to last, Celtic 
on the mother's side, and on that of the father, Celtic, 
Roman, and German, and hence brought over to England 
only the elements they had before, — Celtic, Roman, German, 
and Norse. All this shows plainly that the idea of an 
Anglo-Saxon race, composed of pure Anglian and Saxon 
elements, is sheer nonsense. It shows that the English 
Anglo-Saxon race is composed of the same constituents 
as the other leading European races, not excepting the 
French; and that hence it is simply absurd for Americans 
to call themselves Anglo-Saxons, when they have con- 
founded, and are daily more and more confounding, the 
confusion of the English blood by infusions from the 
veins of all the other nations of Europe. 



304 ARE WE ANGLO-SAXON? 

The truth is, that, made up as we are, of so many 
nationalities, " pigging together, heads and points, in one 
truckle-bed," we are as mixed, piebald, and higgledy- 
piggledy a race as the sun ever looked down upon. Com- 
pared with us, the Romans, who first comprised all the 
vagabonds of Italy, and finally incorporated into the 
empire all the semi-barbarians of Europe, were a homo- 
geneous race. To plume ourselves upon our Anglo- 
Saxon extraction, is as ridiculous as the inordinate pride 
of ancestry rebuked by Defoe, which led the self-styled 
" True-born Englishmen " of his day to sneer at the 
Dutch: 

" Forgetting that themselves are all derived 
From the most scoundrel race that ever lived. 
A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, 
Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns; 
The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot. 
By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought; 
Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, 
Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains; 
Who, joined with Norman French, compound the breed, 
From whence your ' True-born Englishmen ' proceed." 

When we think how much we, in common with the 
English people, are indebted to the sturdy old Norman 
kings and barons for our liberties, we have still less 
reason for joining in the cant of Anglo-Saxonism. Who 
was it that established in England the right of trial by 
jury; that commuted personal service in the field for a 
fair scutage; that taxed nobles and commons alike, and 
struck the hardest blows at the tyranny of feudal lords 
over their vassals? Who was it that summoned the first 
English House of Commons; that gave England her 
judicial circuits; that opposed the stoutest and most 
effectual resistance to the encroachments of the Roman 



ARE WE AtfGLO-SAXCW ? 305 

See? In each ease it was a Norman King. It was the 
Norman Kings who first forbade appeals to Rome, and 
denied to the Papal legates permission to be received as 
such within the realm; and it was the sturdy Norman 
barons who, when John Lackland stooped to resign his 
crown and kingdom into the hands of a Papal legate, and 
to receive it back as a Papal fief, rose against the cow- 
ard, and forced the signing of Magna Charta. If we 
are proud of our descent from the Saxons, let us not 
forget that we have also the blood of the old Scandi- 
navian vikings in our veins, and that but for this infusion 
of Norse fire into their cold Saxon nature, the nation 
from which we have derived our political and religious 
liberties, might have bequeathed to us the same institu- 
tions that prevail on the Continent of Europe. 

Out, then, upon this stereotyped laudation of the 
Anglo-Saxon race and its progress! There is nothing 
more dangerous to our political unity than this miserable 
cant about " races," and especially this gabble about 
Anglo-Saxon blood, which we hear so often in the United 
States. It is just such talk as this which has caused 
many civil wars in Europe,— which in 1848 set the Ger- 
mans and the different Slavic races to cutting each 
other's throats; and it has led to similar horrors in our 
own country. It has already roused the jealousy of our 
South American neighbors, whom our demagogues are so 
fond of teaching us to regard as an inferior race, and 
therefore doomed to be our prey, — -the victims of our 
" manifest destiny." Those Americans who join in these 
vauntings, — proclaiming that we are a great people 
because we are of the same stock as the English, — forget- 
that this self- stultification is anything but creditable to 
13* 



oOfi ARE WE AXGLO-SAXOX ? 

them: that it detracts from rather than adds to the dignity 
of the American character. Instead of blushing or hash- 
ing down our heads on account of our mixed origin, we 
should be proud of it, for all history, ancient and modern, 
shows that it is by the fusion of race that all great and 
vigorous new races are made. All the powerful nations 
of Europe have been reconstituted, — made anew. — in this 
way, and those are the weakest which have received the 
least stimulus of admixture. " The purest populations of 
Europe," says that distinguished ethnologist, Dr. Latham, 
•• are ihe Basques, the Lapps, the Poles, and the Frisians,'* 
— confessedly among the weakest and most insignificant 
tribes of Europe; and he adds that "the most powerful 
nations are the most heterogeneous.'' The British are in 
many respects the most powerful people of Europe, and 
they are also the most heterogeneous. We are still more 
mixed, and every day blends new elements with our blood, 
making our pedigree more and more a puzzle. Consider- 
ing how much Celtic, Scandinavian, and other blood runs 
in our veins, this Anglo-Saxon glorification in our repub- 
lic is peculiarly invidious, exasperating, and misplaced. 
America is not Anglo-Saxon any more than it is Norman 
or Celtic: it is the grand asylum and home of humanity, 
where people of every race and clime under the whole 
Heaven may stand erect on one unvarying plane of 
political and religious equality, — feel that, despite "the 
lack of titles, power and pelf,'' they are men " for a 1 
that," — and bless Heaven that they have work to do. 
food to eat, books to read, and the privilege of worship- 
ping Clod according to the dictates of their own consciences. 
Such may it ever remain! 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 



AMONG the thousand interesting places which the 
-£-«- American traveler may visit in Europe, there are 
none which have a greater charm for the scholar than the 
two university towns of England, Oxford and Cambridge. 
Whatever the architectural beauties or the historic glories 
he finds in the Continental towns, there is no one in 
which he lingers so long and lovingly, no one from which 
he at last tears himself away with such a pang of reluc- 
tance, as from these ancient seats of learning. It is now 
five years since we first enjoyed the intense pleasure of 
treading the quadrangles, the gardens and the halls of 
the two universities; and though we have since visited 
many other places of world-renowned beauty, and hal- 
lowed by historic memories, yet there is no one the men- 
tion of »which conjures up so many pleasant recollections 
of hours too quickly passed, — hours in which eye and ear. 
mind and soul, were intoxicated with delight. — as do the 
names of these famous towns. To which of these haunts 
of learning the palm of beauty is to be given, it is as hard 
as it would be invidious to say. Neither has its parallel 
elsewhere in the world. There is something absolute^ 
unapproachable in the scenes that greet the eye behind 
the colleges at Cambridge, where the Cam steals along 
between frequent arches, and groves, and lawns, and be- 
neath the shadows of venerable edifices; there is no other 
quadrangle in the world like the great quadrangle of 

307 



308 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

Trinity; nor can Oxford boast of any chapel equal to that 
of King's College, with its huge buttresses, its immense 
windows, its profusion of exquisite carvings, and quaint 
fret-work, and above all, its wondrous stone roof, 

" Self-poised and scooped into ten thousand cells, 
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells, 
Lingering,— and wandering as loth to die; 
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof 
That they were horn for immortality." 

Yet the view of Oxford, with its multiplicity of tur- 
rets, pinnacles, and towers, rising in the bosom of a 
beautiful valley, amid waters and gardens, fully merits 
Wordsworth's epithet of "overpowering;' 1 and he who 
can look upon this " City of Palaces," hoary with ancestral 
honors, and rich in treasures of bibliography, science, and 
art. and not exclaim with the poet, 

" Rohed in the grandeur of thy waving woods, 
Girt with a silver zone of winding floods, 
Fair art thou, Oxford!'' 

must be as dull as the clod he treads upon. It was an 
excusable burst of enthusiasm in Robert Hall, when, 
standing on the summit of the Radcliffe Library, he was 
so impressed with the beauty of the scene, — the dark and 
ancient edifices, clustering together in forms full of rich- 
ness and beauty, — the quadrangles, gardens, and groves. 
— the flowing rivers and belting hills, wood-crowned, — 
and, over all, the clear, blue-flecked sky, — that he cried 
out, " Sir, sir, it is surely the New Jerusalem come down 
from Heaven! 11 

It is, of course, impossible, within the limits of a brief 
essay, to speak of a tithe of the interesting things one 
may see in even a day's visit to a city like Oxford or 
Cambridge. The name Oxford is derived from the " Ox- 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 309 

fords" about the city, the particular ford being at Bmsey 
or North Hincksey. The city is of great antiquity, and 
from an early period was one of considerable importance. 
Nearly every British sovereign has visited it, some have 
lived in it, and Parliament has assembled in it on twenty 
different occasions. The zealous antiquaries of the town 
have even claimed that the first English printing-press was 
set up in Oxford, Corsellis having printed a book there in 
1468, four years before Caxton set up a press at West- 
minster. It is much more certain that the first British 
martyrs, that suffered for renouncing the Roman Catholic 
faith, were Oxford men. Thirty Baptists of this city were 
punished for heresy, in the time of Henry II, by starva- 
tion without the walls. The University consists of twenty 
Colleges and five Halls, or unendowed societies. The oldest 
(University) is said to date back to 886; the latest (Keble) 
was founded in 1868. The entrances to the town are all 
more or less picturesque, except that from the railway sta- 
tion, and three of them cross those beautiful meandering 
streams which the Oxonians dignify with the names of 
rivers, — the Thames (here called the "Ms") and the 
" Cherwell." In the good old days, before the scream of 
the locomotive was heard in this charming valley, the. 
visitor, from whatever direction he came, got from the 
top of the stage-coach a glorious view of the city. The 
one that bursts upon you from the Abingdon road, espe- 
cially, is of such ineffable beauty that it must quicken 
the pulse of the veriest dunce. It is one of those rare 
sights that always fill a painter's heart with delight, and 
might be put at once on canvas without the change of a 
feature. We, of course, came by rail, and, entering the 
town from the west, felt little throbbing of the heart till 



310 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

m 

we reached u the heart of its mystery." Strolling along 
with no guide but our Murray, we passed the Castle, 
built in William Rufus's time, now used as a gaol, and 
soon found ourselves in High street, where the genius loci 
at once seized upon us, and we realized that we were 
standing in the intellectual birth-place of Hooker, Hamp- 
den. Wyckliffe. and many another 

" Giant of mighty bone and high emprise,'' 1 

of whose victories not only Englishmen, but Americans, 
are proud. 

This famous street, the pride of Oxford, at once charms 
the stranger by its beauty, and increasing intimacy only 
deepens his admiration. The citizens of Oxford may well 
be pardoned for believing that it has few rivals in the 
world. Tt is certainly a noble street, being eighty-five 
feet in width, and lined with buildings of the most im- 
pressive orders of architecture, the parallels of which are 
to be found nowhere else in the " silver-coasted isle." 
The great and rich variety of buildings, — colleges and 
churches mingling with modern shops and old-fashioned 
dwellings, — and the remarkable diversity of the styles in 
which they are built, are brought, by the gentle curva- 
ture of the street, into the most pleasant combination 
and contrast imaginable. The churches of St. Mary-the- 
Virgin, All Saints 1 , and St. Martin, together with the Col- 
leges of All Souls'. University, Queen's, and Magdalen's, 
present a coup cVceil of the rarest beauty, worth almost 
a trip across the Atlantic to see. Up this street it was 
that went the sad procession of students to the Bible 
Auto-da-Fe in 1527. Carrying each his Bible %nd a fagot, 
they marched slowly and gloomily to Christ Church, thence 
to the place where the sacred books were thrown into the 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 311 

flames. Down this street it was that on March 20, 1556. 
Oranmer slowly wended his weary steps, bowed with years 
and trouble, on his way to St. Mary's Church, to protest 
against "the great thing that troubled his conscience," 
his renunciation of his Protestant faith: and it was but 
a stone's throw from here that, with Latimer and Ridley, 
he received his " baptism of fire.'" The waist-shackle of 
Cranmer is still preserved, and the bailiff's account for 
burning him, which is as follows: 

One hundred wood fagots £0 6 H 

One hundred and fifty f nrze fagots 3 4 

Carriage of them S 

Two laborers 1 4 

£0 12 

As we followed " the stream-like windings of that glo- 
rious street," as Wordsworth terms them, evidences that 
we were in a University- town presented themselves on 
every side. Bookstores abounded, their windows filled 
with classics and rare old tomes; and in other shops 
were exposed for sale gowns, surplices, academical caps, 
and the colored silken hoods that denote the various de- 
grees of University rank. At every step we encountered 
persons in the costume worn by the President of Harvard 
College at Commencement, and which, a few years ago, 
when worn occasionally by undergraduates, provoked the 
biting ridicule of the Boston butcher-boys and truckmen. 

The richest and most extensive of all the Oxford col- 
leges is Christ Church, and to that we took our way. 
This superb structure, " at once a Cathedral and a Col- 
lege,'' owes its foundation to the " King- Cardinal " Wol- 
sey, who feLfc. so deep an anxiety about its completion 
that, in the midst of his trials, he earnestly begged the 



312 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

King to let the work go on. To this college and to 
Trinity College, Cambridge, resort all the princes and 
nobles of Great Britain who desire a liberal education: 
and from this foundation have gone forth a long line of 
illustrious statesmen, who have found no superiors in the 
House of Commons in scholarship, eloquence or ability. 
Four great religious -movements have had their origin in 
this establishment, — WycklihVs in the fourteenth cen- 
tury, James the Second's in the seventeenth, Wesley's 
and Whitefield's in the eighteenth, and Dr.' Pusey's in 
the nineteenth. Nothing can be more imposing than the 
exterior of this college; its long front of four hundred 
feet, with its turrets and balustrades, fill the mind at 
once with ideas of amplitude, magnificence and power. 
Through the grand gateway, above which, in the beauti- 
ful cupola which crowns it, hangs the bell, " Great Tom," 
weighing seventeen thousand pounds, you enter the larg- 
est quadrangle (or " quad ") in Oxford. The bell, we may 
say in passing, originally hung in Osney Abbey campa- 
nille, "the largest and loudest of Osney bells"; and, as 
Milton wrote his " II Penseroso " within four miles of Ox- 
ford, it is supposed that it was the sound of " Tom,'' 
borne over the waters in time of flood, that he had in 
mind when he wrote the famous musical lines, 

" Over some wide-watered shore, 
Swinging slow with sullen roar." 

The buildings of this, as of all the colleges, form a 
square, or series of squares, with generally a green lawn 
in the centre, sometimes a reservoir and fountain; here 
and there trees are planted, and sometimes the walls are 
completely covered with ivy. After a few admiring 
glances at the " quads," we visit the Hall, a magnificent 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 313 

room, among the finest in Europe. It is one hundred 
and fifteen feet long and fifty feet high, and has a roof 
of Irish oak, carved and decorated in the most elaborate 
manner, and adorned with nearly three hundred armo- 
rial bearings of the two founders, Cardinal Wolsey and 
Henry VIII. The walls on both sides are lined with 
portraits of the benefactors of the college,. over one hun- 
dred in number, and all specimens of the best masters. 
Holbein, Lely, Vandyke, Hogarth, Raphael, Reynolds, and 
many other artists hardly less celebrated, have contrib- 
uted to the riches of this gallery. Though three to four 
centuries old, the Hall has none of the dust or decay of 
age, but looks as fresh and bright as if finished but yes- 
terday. Here the scholars of Christ Church dine; the 
Peers, Dean and Canons occupying the raised dais at the 
upper end, the Masters and Bachelors the side- tables, and 
the undergraduates the lower end of the hall. Here Henry 
VIII, Edward VI, James I, Charles I, and other English 
Kings and Queens, have been entertained with plays, de- 
clamations, and banquets; here Handel, the great composer, 
gave concerts; here, in June, 1814, the Allied Sovereigns, 
with Blucher, Metternich, and a host of other celebrities, — 
nine hundred persons in all, — sat down to a princely feast. 
Besides this gallery of portraits the college has in the 
Library building another splendid collection of paintings, 
chiefly of Italian schools, some of them belonging to the 
oldest periods of Italian art. The library is a beautiful 
apartment, 142 feet by 30 feet, and 37 high. The ceiling is 
richly ornamented with delicate stucco work, and the wains- 
coat and pillars are of the finest Norway oak. The room 
is full of literary treasures and curiosities, and adorned 
with antique statues and busts. If the visitor has time, 
14 



314 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

he should take a peep into the kitchen, and see a good 
specimen of an old English cooking-room. Here he will 
see a huge gridiron moved on wheels, 4-g- feet long by 4 
feet wide, used before the introduction of spits and ranges, 
and upon which a whole bullock might have been broiled 
as easily as a single steak at one of the ranges of these 
degenerate days. Leaving this unique cuisine, we next 
proceed to the magnificent Cathedral, now the chapel of 
the college, but originally the Priory Church of St. Prides- 
wide. To describe fully this fine building, which is a 
cruciform 154 feet in length, would require an entire 
article. The beauty of the choir, with the massive Saxon 
pillars on each side, and the double arches springing from 
their capitals, through the air. and meeting in the centre 
the solid arches of the ceiling, with its rich pendants, is 
such as to baffle description. The Cathedral is rich in 
altar-tombs, illuminated windows, and monuments of rare 
workmanship as well as great antiquity. — among which 
are that of that prodigy of out-of-the-way learning. 
Kobett Burton, the author of "The Anatomy of Melan- 
choly." and that of Bishop Berkeley, the metaphysician, 
whose tombstone is inscribed with Pope's eulogy. " To 
Berkeley every virtue under heaven." 

The New Buildings, built in the modern Venetian 
Grothic style. 300 feet in length, and containing fifty luxu- 
rious sets of rooms, next attract our attention: after which 
we visit the shaded walks in the meadows between Christ 
Church and the Isis. than which it is hard to conceive 
of a more beautiful scholarly retreat. These consist of 
'"The New Meadow Walk," six hundred yards long, ex- 
tending from the New Buildings to the river: and "Broad 
Walk, 1 ' a splendid avenue of a quarter of a mile in length 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 315 

and fifty feet in width, lined on each side with lofty elms, 
whose meeting tops form in a hot day a most delicious 
shade. The eminent men of whom Christ Church boasts 
as its scholars form of themselves a dazzling host. Among 
them are William Penn, Locke, Ben Jonson, the two Wes- 
leys. Camden the antiquary, Otway, Byron. Dr. Pusey, Sir 
Robert Peel, Gladstone . Sir . G. C. Lewis, Buskin. Lord 
Derby, and scores of others whose names have been 
sounded hardly less loudly by the trump of fame. 

Leaving Christ Church, we visited college after college, 
which we found to differ in detail, but all agreeing in 
their general plan, and presenting something to charm 
or surprise the traveller. Stepping out of the busy streets. 
— for in this respect the city contrasts with Cambridge, 
which has a more quiet, scholastic air, — you go through 
an arched gateway, and at once find yourself enjoying 
the beautiful lawns, the trees, ivy. flowers, and fountains 
of a quadrangle. No person with a spark of enthusiasm 
or love for the picturesque and beautiful, who has once 
seen these venerable piles, can ever forget the impression 
made on him by their cool cloisters, whose pavements 
are the tombstones of departed worthies; their statues of 
Kings, Queens, and benefactors: their quaint and grotesque 
gargoyles: their libraries filled with the rarest books and 
manuscripts: their chapels adorned with the monuments 
of the mighty men who have made. England the home of 
freedom, letters, and the arts: their vaulted roofs; their 
lofty columns; the splendors of their painted windows, 
that blaze like sparkling jewels in the sunlight; and, if 
he has been so fortunate as to enjoy a general view of 
Oxford's glories from the roof of* the" Radcliffe Library, or 
the tower of New College, he must be made of sterner stuff 



316 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

than flesh and blood if he has not cried out with Words- 
worth, 

14 Ye spires of Oxford! domes and towers! 

Gardens and groves! Your presence overpowers 

The soberness of reason." 

Near by Christ Church is Pembroke College, once the 
nest of those " singing birds," Beaumont, Hey wood, and 
Shenstone, and the Alma Mater of the eloquent George 
Whitefield and the sturdy John Pym. Here that quaint old 
fantast, Sir Thomas Browne, studied; and here, over the 
gateway, on the second floor, roomed heroic Samuel John- 
son, a commoner, " poor as the poorest, proud as the 
proudest"; so poor that he had but one pair of shoes, and 
those so old that his feet peeped through them, — so proud 
that, when a new pair was placed by a gentleman's Order 
outside of his door, he indignantly flung them out of the 
window. Indigence drove Johnson away, long before the 
usual time, from Pembroke; but, though steeped in poverty 
to the lips, he read, as he said, " solidly, 1 ' while there, 
and always regarded his Alma Mater with the profoundest 
veneration and love. 

The oldest of the Oxford colleges is Merton, on our 
way to which we pass between two others, of which we 
must say a word or two. One, Corpus Christi, was founded 
in Henry the Eighth's reign, by Bishop Fox, in memory 
of whom a tame fox was kept in the college for many 
years. Had Corpus nothing else to boast of but those 
two giants of the English Church, Bishop Jewell and the 
judicious Hooker, who were her sons, she might well be 
proud; but she reckons in her roll many worthy suc- 
cessors of these giants, including that " gulf of learning," 
John Rainolds, Dr. Buckland, and John Keble, whose 
"Christian Year" had reached, seven years ago, its 110th 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 317 

edition and 265th thousand. Directly opposite Corpus 

is Oriel College, endowed by Edward II, in 1326. Its 

buildings are not remarkable, but it may challenge any 

other college to show a more splendid muster-roll of names. 

Here were trained Sir Walter Raleigh; Chief Justice 

Holt; Bishop Butler, the author of that impregnable 

bulwark of Christianity, the- "Analogy of Natural and 

Revealed Religion"; Prynne, the stout Republican, whose 

ears were cut off by Charles I; J. H. Newman, the famous 

" fugitive from the camp of Anglicanism," a man of noble 

intellect and antique loftiness of soul, and one of the 

greatest masters of English of this century; Dr. Copleston; 

Archbishop Whately, whose "Logic" has crucified the wits 

of so many students; Matthew Arnold; "Tom Brown" 

Hughes; Bishop Ken, the hymnist; and Richard H. Froude, 

from whom emanated the famous " Tractarian" movement; 

and scores of other men hardly less illustrious. Merton, 

" the primary model of all the collegiate bodies in Oxford 

and Cambridge," merits a minuter notice than our space 

permits us to give. It has three quadrangles, in one of 

the smallest of which is the chapel, which, in grandeur of 

proportion, ranks second to none in Oxford. The side 

windows, of which there are fourteen, illuminated in 

imitation of those at Cologne, are marvels of beauty; and 

the great east or Catherine-wheel window is filled with 

tracery that is rarely matched in delicacy. In looking at 

the architectural triumphs of this and many other chapels 

in Oxford, where 

"Through mullioned windows' tinted panes 
The colored radiance softly fall:?, 
And dyes with flickering roseate stains 
The nave and aisle, the floor and walls," 

one is tempted again and again to ask, Where did these 



318 A DAT AT OXFORD. 

old masons of the Middle Ages learn the secrets of their 
skill? They certainly seem to have had more cunning 
fingers than their modern successors, and to have moulded 
their stone- tracery as though they were working in some 
plastic material. In the Middle Ages, Merton College was 
famous for its professors in scholastic theology. Brad- 
wardine, the great "doctor doctorum" ; John Duns Scotus, 
the a cutest and most subtle- witted of the schoolmen, whose 
name, by a hard fate, has become a synonym for stupidity 
(dunce); Occam, the " invincible " : John Wyckliffe, Sir 
Richard Steele, and Harvey, who discovered the circula- 
tion of the blood, — all belonged to Merton. 

Next in age to Merton, but some distance from it, is 
Balliol College, founded in the thirteenth century, of 
which Prof. Jowett, of the famous "Essays and Reviews" 
memory, is Master. Here Adam Smith the economist. 
Archbishop Manning, and Bishop Temple. Dr. Arnold's 
successor at Rugby, were educated. Among the Masters 
of Balliol in the eighteenth century was a noted wit and 
punster, Dr. Theophilus Leigh. His conversation was a 
perpetual stream of jests and retorts: but his most suc- 
cessful practical joke was living to over ninety, when he 
had been elected Master on account of his weak health 
and likelihood to die early. As a specimen of his jcn.r 
<f esprit, it is said that, when some one told him how. in 
a late dispute among the Privy Councilors, the Lord 
Chancellor struck the table with such violence that he 
split it. Dr. Leigh replied, "No, no; I can hardly per- 
suade myself that he split the table, though I believe he 
divided the Board." Almost in death the ruling passion 
triumphed. Being told, in his last sickness, that a friend 
had been lately married, that he had recovered from a 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 319 

long illness by eating eggs, and that the wits said he had 
been egged on to matrimony, the Doctor at once trumped 
the joke by adding, " Then may the yoke sit easy on him." 
It was to Dr. Parsons, the forty- fourth Master of this 
College, afterwards Vice-Chancellor of the University, that 
Theodore Hook made his reply when he matriculated, at 
Oxford. Being asked if he was "prepared to subscribe 
to the Thirty-nine Articles," Theodore replied, " Oh, 
certainly, sir; forty, if you please! 1 ' 

Leaving Balliol, we stroll down Broad street, and. 
attracted by the sound of music, enter the gardens of 
New College, which, like New York, belies its name, 
having been founded in 1379 by William ofWykeham. 
The gardens are charmingly retired, and among the most 
beautiful of the many delicious retreats wmich Oxford 
offers to the weary or meditative scholar. We wonder 
not that our countryman, the shy, contemplative Haw- 
thorne, was ravished by this -i sweet, quiet, stately, sacred 
seclusion.'" — these lawns of the richest green and softest 
velvet grass, shadowed over by ancient trees, and sheltered 
from the rude winds; for we can conceive of nothing 
more delightful than to spend an hour's leisure, earned 
by a half-dozen hours of hard study, in lounging about 
or lying down in these lovely grounds, building air- 
castles, planning new intellectual conquests, or musing 
over the days of " lang syne." The charm of the gar- 
dens is enhanced by the picturesque views one gets here 
of the college-buildings; and one hears with interest that 
the boundary on one side is the ancient city- wall which 
Cromwell's artillery battered at the siege of the town. 
The music that drew us here comes from a fine band 
attached to a military company of the students, which 



320 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

plays two or three afternoons in the week for the delight 

of the scholars and their outside friends. The concert 

ended, we attend the evening service in the chapel, and 

listen to some of the most exquisite choral harmonies that 

have ever 

" from eating cares 
Lapped us in soft Lydian airs." 

The choir of singers is the best-trained, and the chapel 
by general consent the noblest, in Oxford. The choir is 
one hundred feet long; the nave, or ante-chapel, eighty 
feet; it is sixty-five feet high, and thirty-five broad. The 
style of .architecture is the early perpendicular, retaining 
much of the simplicity of the decorated, but displaying 
the decided peculiarities of the later style. The organ, 
whose capabilities are gloriously revealed in the choral 
service, is one of the finest in England. But the grand 
attraction to most visitors is the illuminated windows 
designed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Peckett of York, and 
the pupils of Rubens, which, if beauty, not the admission 
of light, be the object of windows, must be deemed worthy 
of high admiration. The original sketches for the great 
west window, by Reynolds, were sold at auction, it is said, 
in 1821, for £7,229 5s. In this chapel is preserved the 
silver-gilt pastoral staff of the founder, seven feet long, 
— an exquisite relic of the finished style of the jewelers 1 
work, with enamels, of the period, and of the most 
elaborate workmanship. Lack of space prevents more 
than an allusion to the massive tower of this college, 
with its fine peal of bells, upon which is inscribed Wyke- 
ham's motto, "Manners makyth man"; and to the clois- 
ters, with their remarkable echo, repeating sounds seven 
or eight times. New College boasts many famous sons. 
It was these cloisters that echoed Sydney Smith's jokes 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 321 

and laughter; and it was within these walls that William 
Pitt (Lord Chatham) learned to plume his wings for his 
grand oratorical nights. 

Beautiful as is New College, with its grand old tur- 
reted tower, its splendid chapel, and its shaded grounds, 
it must yield the palm to Magdalen, the magnificent, 
(for that is the meaning of its Syriac name,) which we . 
are inclined to look upon as the gem of the Oxford 
colleges. Magdalen is, truly, a glorious establishment, 
and we do not wonder that the old University laureate, 
Antony a' Wood, in singing its praises, bursts into a 
rapturous strain, quite above his usual prosaic style. 
Grand old buildings this college has, that gladden the 
eye and captivate the imagination, from the 

" High embowed roof 
With antique pillars massy proof," 

and the stately tower with its " tunable and melodious 
ring of bells, 1 ' down to studious cloisters; trim gardens, 
too, it has, full of rare plants and flowers; smooth-shaven 
lawns, and arched walks of twilight groves; water-walks 
" as delectable as the banks of Eurotas, where Apollo him- 
self was wont to walk and sing his lays"; and rivers which 
so pleasantly, and with a murmuring noise, wind and turn, 
that we are almost ready to agree with honest Wood, 
that one may, in a manner, say of them that which the 
people of Angouleme, in France, were wont to say of their 
River Touvre, that it is " covered over and checkered with 
swans, paved and floored with trouts, and hemmed and 
bordered with crevices." The buildings of this college 
which are comprised within three quadrangles, cover an 
area of three acres. The grounds comprise more than 
one hundred acres. Entering the college by the beauti- 



322 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

fill new gateway, with its canopied statues of Mary Mag- 
dalen, St. John the Baptist, and the founder (William 
Waynflete, Lord Chancellor of England in the reign of 
Henry VI), we are greeted with one of the most strik- 
ing displays of architectural beauty in Oxford. Directly 
fronting us is the west end of the chapel, with a gor- 
. geous window, and beneath it an elaborately-ornamented 
doorway, with a shallow porch richly sculptured, and sur- 
mounted by five statues in canopied niches, — which, with 
the lofty tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, with its 
diadem of pinnacles and fretted battlements, forms one 
of the most imposing spectacles we have yet witnessed. 
The chapel, which, about forty years ago was thoroughly 
restored, at an expense of £28,000. is an architectural 
gem. The altar-screen, the oak seats and stalls, the or- 
gan-screeji of stone. — all the carvings, whether of stone 
or wood. — are executed with the rarest felicity. Mag- 
nificent candelabra, exquisite paintings, and superb painted 
windows, are among the other beauties of this unique 
place of worship: and when we add the powerful organ, 
which Cromwell carried off to Hampton Court, but which 
Charles II restored, it must be admitted that this chapel 
has few peers even in this land of chapels. We regret 
that it was not our good fortune to attend h choral ser- 
vice in it. and hear 

•■ The pealing organ blow- 
To the fnll-voiced choir below": 

for it is said to be solemn and impressive in a degree 
rarely equaled. 

Visiting the library; the cloisters, with their grotesque 
figures, which have so puzzled the antiquaries: and the 
hall, hung around with portraits: we next pass by a nar- 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 323 

row passage into the chaplain's quadrangle, where we 
have another glorious view of the tower, from its base 
to the top. Its simplicity of structure and its graceful 
proportions, — its union of real solidity with extreme 
lightness of appearance, — make it- one of the hncst 
structures of its class in England. Tradition says that 
upon the top formerly, on every May morning at four 
o'clock, a requiem was sung for the soul of Henry VII: 
and the custom of chanting a hymn there, beginning 

11 Te Deum Patrem colimus. 
Te laudibus prosequimur," 

on the same morning each year, is still preserved. 

How shall we do justice to the charming grounds of 
Magdalen, — the meadows with their winding, tree-em- 
bowered walks along the banks of the Cherwell, their 
rustic bridges, and the peep at the antique-looking water- 
mill? Can any trees be grander, any lawns more soft 
and pleasant, any scholastic retreats more cool and shady, 
any views more picturesque than these? And then that 
dainty relic of monastic daj'S, the little Deer-Park; how 
Old- World-like it seems, as another has said, to step out 
of the High-street of a great city upon a quiet, secluded 
nook, where deer are quite unconcernedly browsing among 
huge old elms! It was in these learned groves that Ad- 
dison loved to linger: here Gibbon studied; here the mel- 
ancholy Collins wooed the genius of poetry; here glorious 
"Kit North" drank his earliest draughts of hippocrene: 
and here, in ages to come, will many other Englishmen, 
of equal genius, echo the words of Antony a" Wood: 

" Thou clear old college, by whatever name 
Natives or strangers call our Oxford •• Queen," 
To me. from days long past, thou art the same, 
Maudlin — or Magdalen — or Magdalene." 



324 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

Leaving Magdalen, we next proceed to the Bodleian 
library, founded in 1409, and refounded by " that full 
solempne man,' 1 Sir Thomas Bodley, in 1602. This vast 
collection comprises about four hundred thousand vol- 
umes, — a wilderness of books, — and is remarkable not 
only for its size, but for the peculiar character of its 
" volumed wonders." It is said that no other library of 
similar extent in Europe, — none in Paris, Brussels, Frank- 
fort, Munich, Valladolid, or Madrid, — has so conventual a 
character. Associated with all the great traditions of 
England, from the age of Duke Humphrey, its original 
founder, down to the present century, — from the days 
when Queen Elizabeth, in ruff and farthingale, with 
Burghley and Walsingham at her side, harangued the 
doctors and Heads of Houses in Latin, to the time when 
the Allied Sovereigns celebrated the downfall of Napo- 
leon within its walls, — it is no wonder that its treasures 
of books, manuscripts, and rarities have a kind of unique- 
ness and quaint antiquity about them, not found else- 
where. An adequate account of the bibliographical curi- 
osities which are accumulated here would fill a goodly 
volume. Truly may the scholar, as he sits in the read- 
ing cells and curtained cages of " old Bodley," murky 
in its antiquity, redolent of old bindings, fragrant with 
moth-scented coverings, say with Southey, 

" My days among the dead are passed, 
Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 
The mighty minds of old." 

Here are a " History of Troy," printed by Caxton at Bru- 
ges in 1472, the first book printed in the English language; 
a copy of Caedmon's Anglo-Saxon version of Genesis, made 
about a. d. 1000; a Bible collection, including almost 



A DAY AT OXFORD. 325 

every known version; an Aldine edition of Ovid's "Meta- 
morphoses," containing a genuine autograph of Shakespeare: 
a Latin Bible printed by Gutenberg at Mentz about 1455, 
the first book printed from movable types; an Italian 
sermon, translated by Queen Elizabeth into Latin, whilst 
Princess, and written in her own handwriting; and hun- 
dreds of other similar rarities. .Here are the collections of 
Dr. Dee, the earliest of spirit-rappers, who " did observe and 
write down what was said by the spirits"; here, are gar- 
nered up all the correspondence of Lord Clarendon, and 
the little notes that passed between him and Charles I, in 
the lobby of the House of»Commons, during the debates 
that cost the King his crown; and here, too, are the corre- 
spondence of the Parliamentary generals, and the papers of 
the famous non-jurors. Passing to the upper story of the 
library building, we enter the Picture Gallery, which 
comprises three sides of the quadrangle. The pictures 
are chiefly portraits of benefactors of the University and 
of eminent literary men, by Vandyke, Lily, Kneller, Jan- 
sen, Reynolds, and others. Along the centre of the rooms 
are models of the ancient temples of Greece and Italy; a 
very curious one of a subterranean palace in Guzerat; an 
elaborate model of the Cathedral of Calcutta; and one of 
the Maison Carree of Nismes in France. Among the 
rarities in the room are a chair made out of " The 
Golden Hind, " the ship in which Drake circumnavigated 
the globe, and the veritable lantern of Guy Fawkes. 

Our sketch is long, and yet we have said nothing of the 
Arundel marbles: nothing of the Ratcliffe library, with its 
antique statues, busts, Italian marbles, and especially, its 
lofty dome, from the balustrade surrounding whose exterior 
you may have a Hue panoramic view of the "city of spires 



326 A DAY AT OXFORD. 

and pinnacles"; nothing of the magnificent Taylor Insti- 
tute, with its art-treasures, including paintings, statues, 
original drawings by Raphael and Angelo, purchased at a, 
cost of £7,000, and which are marked with all the beauty 
and grandeur that distinguished their public works; nothing 
of the .Ashmolean Museum, or the New Museum (346 feet 
by 145), packed full with collections and specimens in every 
department of science: nothing of the exquisitely-beautiful 
Martyrs' . Memorial. 73 feet high, with richly-canopied 
statues, erected near the spot where the three Bishops. — 
Oranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. — in blinding smoke and 
tormenting tiames, yielded up^their lives at the stake: and 
we have barely alluded to St. Mary's Church, whose "sym- 
metric pride" so dazzles the beholder when the pale moon- 
light falls on spire, buttresses, statues, and pinnacles. 
As we look back in imagination upon these sights and 
scenes, to which we bade adieu but a few years ago. they 
Hit before. us, though fixed forever in the mind, like the 
pleasant memories of a dream. Even after a hurried peep 
at the glories of this vast establishment, we cease to wonder 
that Lipsins. on first beholding them, declared with fervor 
that one college of this university was greater in its power 
and splendor, that it glorified and illustrated the honors of 
literature more conspicuously by the pomps with which it 
invested the ministers and machinery of education, than 
any entire university of the Continent. flo. reader, and 

see for vourself this home of letters, and you will confess 

•* 

that we have not told you half the truth of this wondrous 
town, which you will evermore think of as 

A rich gem, in circling gold enshrined. 
Where Isis' waters wind 

Along the sweetest shore 
That ever felt fair Culture's hands, 

Or Spring's embroidered mantle wore." 



AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 



V MONTI the strange and unique sights which attract 
-£-*- the eye of the stranger in London, one of the 
oddest is the apparition, in the neighborhood of Newgale 
street, of a boy dressed in a monastic garb of the sixteenth 
century. It is raining, yet he is bareheaded, and he wears 
a long, flowing, dark-blue coat, like a monk's tunic, confined 
at the waist by a leather belt, which, with yellow breeches, 
shoes, and yellow stockings, complete his quaint costume. 
Who is he? Is he the ghost of some boy of the sixteenth 
century, or is he a living, fiesh-and-blood urchin of the 
nineteenth century, arrayed in the garb of a bygone time? 
We need not be ashamed to confess our inability to solve 
this problem, for it is one which puzzled even so acute and 
ingenious a thinker as Sydney Smith. The witty Canon of 
St. Paul's brooded long over the origin of the Bluecoat 
Hoy. — for it is by this name he is ycleped. — and finally haz- 
arded the theory that he was a Quaker in the chrysalis state. 
" Look at the circumstances, " he urged, in a discussion 
with the Countess of Morley; "at a very early age, young- 
Quakers disappear, — at a very early age the Coat Boys 
are seen; at the age of seventeen or eighteen young- 
Quakers are again seen, — at the same age, the Coat Boys 
disappear: who has ever heard of a Coat Man? The 
thing is utterly unknown in natural history. That such 
a fact should have escaped our naturalists is truly aston- 
ishing. . . . Dissection would throw great light on the 

327 



328 ah hour at Christ's hospital. 

question; and, if our friend would receive two boys 

into his house about the time of their changing their 
coats, great service would be rendered to the cause. I 
I have ascertained that the Bluecoat infants are fed with 
drab-colored pap, which looks very suspicious." To these 
daring speculations Lady Morley replied with reasonings 
equally shrewd and hard to answer. The possible cor- 
rectness of Sydney's theory she admitted; but there was 
a grave difficulty: "The Bluecoat is an indigenous animal, 
— not so the Quaker. ... I have seen and talked much 
with Sir R. Ker Porter on this interesting subject. He 
has traveled over the whole habitable globe, and has 
penetrated with a scientific and scrutinizing eye into 
regions unexplored by civilized man, and yet he has 
never seen a Quaker baby. He has lived for years in 
Philadelphia (the national nest of Quakers); he has roamed 
up and down Broadways, and lengthways in every nook 
and corner of Pennsylvania, and yet he never saw a 
Quaker baby; and what is new and most striking, never 
did he see a Quaker lady in a situation which gave hope 
that a Quaker baby might be seen hereafter. This is a 
stunning fact, and involves the question in such impene- 
trable mystery as will, I fear, defy even your sagacity, 
acuteness, and industry to elucidate." 

How the question was settled, — whether Sydney con- 
tinued to maintain that there never was such a thing as 
a Quaker baby, that " they are always born broad-brim- 
med and in full quake," — we know not; and therefore, 
in lieu of other authority, we will accept the traditionary 
history of the Bluecoats. According to this, Christ's Hos- 
pital, or the Bluecoat School, was founded in 1553 by 
Edward VI, in his sixteenth year, just before his death. 



AK HO UK AT CHRIST^ HOSPITAL. 329 

The buildings were erected on the site of the monaster}*- of 
the Gray Friars, of which a few arches, a part of a cloister, 
are all that remains; and the queer costume of the boys, 
which they intensely dislike, was adopted at the time. The 
flat caps supplied to them are so small that the boys rarely 
wear them, and go bareheaded. In 1672, Charles II founded 
the Mathematical School for forty boys, called " King's 
Boys," to which twelve more have been added; and they 
are distinguished by a badge on the shoulder. The school 
now has an income of £40,000 a year, and it feeds, clothes, 
and educates twelve hundred children, of whom five hun- 
dred, including the younger children and girls, are kept 
in' a branch school at Hertford, for the sake of pure air. 
It was through the kindness of Messrs. Triibner & Co., 
the celebrated publishers and booksellers, whose shop on 
Ludgate Hill, London, is within a stone's throw of 
Christ's Hospital, that we found an " Open Sesame " to 
the famous school. While indulging our bibliomaniac 
propensities there one day, we were so lucky as to be 
introduced to Dr. Brette, Professor of Modern Languages 
in the school, who kindly invited us to visit it the next 
day. Christ's Hospital! Where is the scholar or literary 
man whose pulse does not quicken at the mention of 
these words? What a crowd of pleasant memories they 
conjure up! Who, that has skimmed but the surface of 
modern English literature, has not read Charles Lamb's 
charming "Recollections" of that school? Christ's Hospi- 
tal! where not only the loving Carlagnulus, as he was 
afterwards called, but Coleridge, " the inspired charity- 
boy," and Camden, and Leigh Hunt, and scores of other 
worthies, began their education, — how did our hearts 
leap up at the prospect of seeing the very benches 
14* 



330 AH HOCK AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 

which they hacked, the very spots where they quailed 
under the eagle glance and thunder tones of Boyer! 
Accepting Dr. B.'s invitation, we next day proceeded to 
Newgate street, and, passing the gloomy prison, turned 
into a cross-street, where, aoout noon, we entered the 
boy- King's school. Entering a corridor, we notice on the 
wall numerous tablets placed there in honor of the grad- 
uates of the school who have become its benefactors. 
Not a few of England's "solid men" of business, who 
were educated here, have left handsome legacies to the 
institution. The buildings consist of several large struct- 
ures of brick, fronting paved courts, which serve as play- 
grounds for the boys in sunny weather, while the corri- 
dors shield them from the rain in wet weather. Following 
the lead of Dr. Brette,, we visit a school-room, where the 
hard seats and benches, with deep gashes testifying to the 
excellence of English cutlery, remind us of the pine 
planks upon which we tried our Rogers in the old reel 
school-house of our boyhood. Was there ever a school- 
boy who did not make his mark with his jack-knife. 
whatever his failures in recitation? 

The eulogists of i; modern improvements " will find 
but little to admire in these venerable piles, except the 
swimming-room. — the water of which is tempered at 
pleasure. — the admirable bathing-rooms, of which the 
boys are required to make use at prescribed times. — and 
the clean and airy hospital, where boys who are unwell, 
or who have met with an injury in their sports, are cared 
for by skillful surgeons and tender nurses. Visiting these 
apartments, we next glance at the dormitories, with their 
multitude of iron bedsteads and the monitor's room in 
the corner: and then return to the playground, where 



an hour at Christ's hospital. 831 

memory is busy calling up the history of* the Bluecoats 
whose names have been blazoned high on the scroll of 
fame. Can it be, we musingly ask ourselves, that the 
spider-legged, spectral-looking " Elia " once trod these 
courts, and trembled in yon rooms under the master's 
frown? Did Home Tooke here begin the " Diversions, of 
Purley," and Wesley shout in his boyish games as he 
never did afterwards in the Methodist class-roomy Did 
the thoughtful Addison and the careless, impulsive Dicky 
Steele here kick the football, and little Barrow begin the 
pugilistic feats which he afterwards repeated with such 
effect in his struggle with an Algerine corsair? Was it 
here that the youthful Blaekstone tested in boyish games 
the strength of the British Constitution; and was it from 
this school that Mitchell, the translator of "Aristophanes." 
was translated to Cambridge? All these names are on the 
muster-rolls of the Bluecoat School, and many others 
hardly less brilliant. 

We think of these, and of the Bedlam cells to which 
naughty boys in Elia's time were consigned: little fellows 
of seven years shut up all night in these dungeons, where 
they could just lie at length upon straw and a blanket: 
with only a peep of light by day. let in from a prison - 
orifice at the top; and permitted to come forth only twice 
a week and then to be flogged by the beadle. We think 
of the fierce master. Boxer, and his two wigs. — the one 
serene, smiling, fresh -powdered, and betokening a mild 
day. — the other, an old, discolored, unkempt, angry caxon. 
denoting frequent and bloody execution. We see him shak- 
ing his knotty fist at a poor, trembling child, and crying. 
" Sirrah, do you presume to set your tritx at me?" — then 
flinging back into his lair, and after a few moments 



832 AN HOUR AT CHRIST*S HOSPITAL. 

bounding forth again, and singling out a lad with the 
exclamation, " Od\s my life, sirrah, I have a great mind 
to whip you," which imperfect sense he speedily " pieces 
out," as if it had been some devil's litany, with the ex- 
pletory yell, i- and / will, too'' We see the l * gentle 
Elia" in another room, where the thunders rolled innoc- 
uous, listening to the Ululantes, and catching glimpses of 
Tartarus; we hear Coleridge, hardly yet in his teens, 
unfolding the mysteries of Plotinus, or reciting Homer 
or Pindar in his Greek, to the wonderment of the visit- 
ors. We think, too, of Coleridge's pious ejaculation 
when told that his old master was on his death-bed: 
"Poor J. B. ! may all his faults be forgotten, and may he 
be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys all head and wings, 
with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities!" 

We think of the poor scholar who conveyed to his 
room his fragments of coarse meat, which he was sup- 
posed to sell to beggars, for which he was excommunicated 
by the other boys as a gq,g-eater, until the kind steward 
found that he carried home the scraps, which he denied 
himself, to his starving parents. We think of the silver 
medal which the noble lad received for this from the 
Governor of the school: and then, perhaps, our thoughts 
revert to another boy, the petty Nero, afterwards seen a 
culprit in the hulks, who actually branded a boy who had 
offended him, with a red-hot iron, — and who nearly starved 
forty younger lads, by exacting from them daily one-half 
of their bread to pamper a young ass, which he had con- 
trived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the 
irord, as the dormitories were called, till the foolish 
beast, waxing fat, and kicking in the fulness of bread, 
betrayed him by braying. All these, and many other 



AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 333 

recollections, comic or touching, are related by Lamb and 
Coleridge in their own inimitable style, but hardly seemed 
to us, when we were 4,000 miles away, as they do now, 
realities. It was here, too. that the following ludicrous 
scene occurred, narrated by some graduate, to omit which, 
in an account of this famous school, would be like blot- 
ting Moses' experience from the Vicar of Wakefield: 

Among the scholars, when Lamb and Coleridge attended, 
was a poor clergyman's son, by the name of Simon Jennings. 
On account of his dismal and gloomy nature, his playmates 
had nicknamed him Pontius Pilate. One morning he went 
up to the master, Dr. Boyer, and said, in his usual whim- 
pering manner, " Please, Dr. Boyer, the boys all call me 
Pontius Pilate.* 1 If there was one thing which old Boyer 
hated more than a false quantity in Greek and Latin, it 
was the practice of nicknaming. Rushing down among 
the scholars from his pedestal of state, with cane in hand, 
he cried, with his usual voice of thunder: "Listen, boys; 
the next time I hear any of you say ' Pontius Pilate,' I'll 
cane you as long as this cane will last. You are to say 
• Simon Jennings,' not ' Pontius Pilate.' Remember that, 
if you value your hides." Having said this, Jupiter 
Tonans remounted Olympus, the clouds still hanging on 
his brow. 

The next day, when the same class were reciting the 
Catechism, a boy of remarkably dull and literal turn of 
mind had to repeat the creed. He had got as far as 
" suffered under," and was about popping out the next 
word, when Boyer's prohibition unluckily flashed upon his 
obtuse mind. After a moment's hesitation he blurted out. 
"suffered under Simon Jennings, was cruci — ." The rest 
of the word was never uttered, for Boyer had already 



834 AX HOUR AT CHRIST S HOSPITAL. 

sprung like a tiger upon him, and the cane was descending 
upon his unfortunate shoulders like a Norwegian hail-storm 
or an Alpine avalanche. When the irate Doctor had dis- 
charged his cane-storm upon him, he .cried: " What do you 
mean, you booby, by such blasphemy? 1 ' "I only did as you 
told me,' 1 replied the simple-minded Christ-Churchian. 
'• Did as T told you?" roared old Boyer, now wound up 
to something above the boiling point. ' " What do you 
mean?" As he said this, he again instinctively grasped 
his cane more furiously. ''Yes. Doctor, you said we were 
always to call ' Pontius Pilate ' ' Simon Jennings. 1 Didn't 
he, Sam?" appealed the unfortunate culprit to Coleridge, 
who was next to him. Sam said nought: but old Boyer, 
who saw what a dunce he had to deal with, cried, "Boy, 
you are a fool. Where are your brains?" Poor Dr. 
Boyer for a second time was floored, for the scholar said, 
with an earnestness which proved its truth, but to the 
intense honor of the learned potentate. " In my stomach, 
sir." The Doctor ever afterwards respected that boy's 
stupidity, as though half afraid that a stray blow might 
be unpleasant. 

But, whoop! our musings are interrupted by shouts, 
and away bounds a foot! tail, followed by an avalanche 
of boys, screaming, pushing, kicking, jostling, and tum- 
bling headlong, very much like boys in America, and 
showing, by their earnestness, impetuosity, and energy, 
that they belong to the nineteenth century, and not to 
the sixteenth. But what a plague their long coats are, 
and how strange that the Governors do not see the gro- 
tesqueness and inconvenience of these old monkish cos- 
tumes! To play their games the boys tuck up their 
coat-tails, and so. we suppose, will have to do for years 



AN HOIK AT (II HI Si's HOSPITAL. 335 

to come, till John Bull can see that modern garments 
may be substituted without impairing the stability of the 
British Constitution. 

But, hark! a burst of martial music is heard; the 
boys have dropped the footballs, and, under the directions 
of a drill-master, are marshaled in platoons, each display- 
ing its number on a flag. After a series of evolutions, 
they march, seven hundred strong, with a boy-band of 
thirty performers at their head, up the grand staircase 
to the Gothic hall, to dinner. This magnificent hall, 
which was completed in 1829, is 187 feet long, is lighted 
by large stained-glass windows, has an organ gallery at 
one end, and the walls are hung with portraits of the 
founder and benefactors of the institution. We take seats 
on a platform on the west side of the hall: a beil is 
touched, and a boy at the organ plays an anthem, while 
seven hundred children's voices mingle in the chant of 
thanksgiving. Another bell, and down sit the boys, oil' 
come the covers, and Bluecoats wait on Bluecoats, until 
all have quieted their barking stomachs with a plentiful 
supply of meat, potatoes, bread, and, above all, beer. The 
boys themselves clear the tables, and, after a few minutes' 
chat with them, we leave the hall, with many thanks to 
Dr. Brette for his courtesies, and a feeling that hence- 
forth the writings of "Elia" and the " Highgate Sage" 
will have for us an added charm, if it is possible for 
us to hang with profounder interest over their bewitch- 
ing pages. Meanwhile, if any of our readers care to see 
the famous old school as it has been for three centuries, 
they must cross the ocean soon, for these venerable piles are 
speedily to be swept away, to make room for the ruthless 
locomotives of the Mid- London Railway. 



BOOK-BUYING. 



T3 "EADER. were you ever afflicted with that hopelessly- 
-L ^ incurable disease, yeleped bibliomania, — that disease 
which sends its victim daily to Appleton's or Scribner's 
to empty his pocket-book freely in the purchase of rare 
and curious editions, or, perhaps, luxurious modern edi- 
tions, of favorite old authors, flaunting in the bravery of 
large, dear type, with snow-white paper. — a rivulet of 
ink in a meadow of margin? Do you know what it is 
to lie drawn to the book salesroom with an attraction like 
that of the steel to the magnet, and to find the tap of 
the auctioneer's hammer as irresistible as is the roll of 
the roulette-ball to the gambler, or the music of cork- 
drawing to the toper? Did you ever stand for hours 
wistfully turning over the pages of some coveted volume, 
vainly racking your brains for some art by which, with 
your limited funds, to make it your own? Did you ever 
feel your heart sink within you when, through your hes- 
itation, or, more likely, the depletion of your purse, some 
ardently-coveted volume, on which you had fastened with 
longing eyes. — which, in imagination, you had already 
seen snugly stowed in a corner of your library, — passed 
by the inexorable law of the hammer to some luckier 
individual? Have you not deplored a thousand times the 
fatality that led you to haunt these marts of literature, 
and resolved, and re-resolved, and resolved again, never 
more to be seduced by the witchery of tree-calf, fine tool- 

336 



BOOK - BUYING. 337 

ing, or luxurious type and paper? And yet, if the book- 
buying disease had fairly seized on you, did you ever 
succeed in extirpating it, stern as might be the necessity 
for economy? If you got it under for a week, or pos- 
sibly for a month, did you not invariably find, in the very 
ecstasy of your triumph, that it had . temporarily abated 
only to break forth with tenfold fuiy? 

If you have ever experienced the feelings we have 
described, we can sympathize with you. We have been a 
life-long victim of the disease, which early became chronic 
and incurable. Our ruin daied from the hour when we 
bought our first duplicate. This downward step, as John 
Hill Burton says, is fraught with fearful consequences; 
it is like the first secret dram swallowed in the forenoon, 
or the first pawning of the silver spoons; there is no hope 
for the patient after this: "It rends at once the veil of 
decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has 
been deceiving his friends, and partially deceiving him- 
self, into the belief that his previous purchases were 
necessary, or, at all events, serviceable for professional 
and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and 
hardened; and it is observable, in the career of this class 
of unfortunates, that the first act of duplicity is immedi- 
ately followed by an access of the disorder, and a reckless 
abandonment to its propensities. 11 

Shall we ever forget the evenings passed in "lang 
syne " at Leonard's, in the American Athens, — at Bangs's, 
in Gotham, — or at Lord's, in the City of Brotherly Love, 
mobs, and firemen's fights, in watching the sale of those 
darlings in calf or turkey-morocco, on which we had set 
our affections? How, like many a lover by the side of 
flesh-and-blood mistresses, did we sigh for wealth for their 
15 



338 BOOK -BUYING. 

sake! The beauties! we would have embraced them all; 
but, alas! a terrible presentiment weighed upon our mind 
touching the number we should be able to secure in the 
awful conflict of the evening. The Duke of York, nam- 
ing the select courtiers whom he wished to be saved from 
the wreck of the Gloucester frigate, leaving the rest to 
perish, was but a faint type of our gloomy self, deciding 
among scores of coveted volumes upon the few choicest and 
most fondly-prized ones, which we were most anxious to 
carry to the dry land of our own snug bookcase at home. 
Then how anxiously we weighed the chances, — how pro- 
foundly we estimated the probabilities, — of securing, or 
not securing, the favorites! Perhaps our capital was 
enough only to warrant the hope of winning one goodly- 
sized volume, — a fine old copy of Selden, Fuller, Burton, or 
Sir Thomas Browne; should we concentrate all our finan- 
cial resources upon that, or should we divide our affec- 
tions and our cash among two or three smaller volumes'? 
Perhaps, — hateful thought! — the very book or books we 
yearned for might be eyed and coveted by some richer 
rival, who would outbid us. The work came early in the 
catalogue; there would be few present; it would go cheap. 
It was in the middle of the list, — the very noon of the 
sale; it would go dear. Oh! how we dreaded to see cer- 
tain well-known faces peering through the crowd! Never 
have we had rivals whom we feared or hated more than 
rival book-buyers. Even when we neither saw nor heard 
any person who had fixed his affections on the book we 
longed for, there was sure to be some lynx-eyed Burn- 
ham, or other "Antique-Bokestore " man, who would 
fight to the last dollar, or, at least, make us pay dearly 
for the treasure if we won it. With what perfect malig- 



BOOK - BUYING. 339 

nity did we regard these cruel, remorseless, but crafty, 
old fellows, — these tyrants, — who bid off the precious 
volumes, not from any love of them, but from the mean 
and sordid motive of making money! 

There are some persons who have no sympathy with 
the inveterate book-buyer; who cannot appreciate the 
miser-like feeling which prompts a man to accumulate 
on his shelves hundreds of volumes which he can never 
read. There are those to whom the artificial refinements 
which have grown up about the outside of literature 
yield no pleasure, — to whom one of Pickering's gorgeous 
editions, or even one of Aldus himself, has no greater 
charms than the same work on flimsy paper and in 
shabby sheep. They read purely for information. A- 
book to them is a storehouse of ideas and facts, or a 
mine to be quarried and worked, after which they care 
not what happens to it. The volumes they have read are 
to them shells without kernels, oranges that have been 
squeezed. They never acquire a love for a book, as a 
true smoker does for his pipe, apart from its uses. No 
pleasant associations or delicious memories cluster about 
their volumes, which the bare sight of them, after ab- 
sence, conjures up. No pets or darlings of the heart 
have they ; their souls never warm to a book. They can- 
not understand the feeling which prompted Charles Lamb 
to kiss a long- coveted old folio which he had found at a 
bookstall. The best book in the world, after they have 
sucked out all its marrow, is to these cold-blooded, mat- 
ter-of-fact readers, nothing but printed paper between 
boards; just as, to some persons, the grandest old cathe- 
dral, with its fretwork and tracery, is only a pile of stone 
and mortar, and the music of Rubinstein only the regu- 



340 BOOK - BUYING. 

lated tinkling of piano wires. There are persons who 
will walk down the finest nave in Christendom and see 
there no poem in stone, and there are those who can 
gaze on the superb alcoves of Trinity College library, 
Cambridge, without an emotion. Of such a man we may 
say, in the language of Wordsworth: 

"A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose is to him, 
And it is nothing more." 

There is another and a larger class of readers, who 
have a still lower esteem for books. These are the hellu- 
ones librornm, the literary gluttons, who devour whole 
libraries, and prize books only as a means of amusement, 
or of killing time. Volumes of history, novels, travels, to 
these men are mere mile-posts to a swift and hurried 
traveller. When they close a work, they have the same 
hazy, confused recollection of its contents that a passenger 
in a " lightning-express " railway train has of the brooks, 
meadows, hills, dales, and other objects, by which he has 
been whirled. Each volume they race through acts as a 
sponge to wipe out the impressions made by its predeces- 
sors. Readers of this stamp have even less real love for 
books than the utilitarians first mentioned. They never 
say with Macaulay: "I have no pleasure from books 
which equals that of reading over for the hundredth 
time great productions which I know almost by heart." 
They never say of these silent teachers, with DeBury: 
" Hi sunt magistri qui nos instruunt sine vergis et ferula, 
sine verbis et colera, sine pane et pecunia"; nor will you 
ever catch them exclaiming, as did Theodore Beza to his 
loved volumes: 

"Salvete, incolumes mei libelli, 
Meae deliciae, meae salutes!" 



BOOK - BUYING. 341 

With all such users of books, who are indifferent to 
their dress, — whether grim utilitarians, who prize only 
their thoughts, or pleasure-hunters who read to avoid 
thought, — we have no sympathy, yet no quarrel. With 
Horace, we bid them stultos esse Ubenter, and wish them, 
in the words of the Archbishop of. Granada to Gil Bias, 
" all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste." We 
envy not the disposition that leads a man to prize not 
the jewel more for its brilliant setting; that looks upon 
books over which the eye has hung from childhood as 
mere bricks in a wall, and that, without a pang or sigh, 
could replace them by others from the nearest shop. 
Almost every man has his hobby, — his pet taste, — which 
he loves, at whatever cost of time or money, to gratify. 
The hobby of one man is shells; another spends all his 
spare cash for pictures; a third doats on old coins; a 
fourth, on bugs and butterflies; and a fifth rides a musical 
hobby, and goes merrily through the world to the sound 
of fiddle, flute, French horn, and double bass. The hobby 
of another is books, — books old and new, in vellum and 
in calf, gilt-edged and marbled, with headbands and with- 
out, — with which, perhaps, he packs his cases, loads his 
what-nots, stuffs his drawers, and piles his floors, till his 
whole house becomes a library, a wilderness of books! He 
is a black-letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or 
a rough-edged man, or an early-dramatist, or an Elzevirian, 
or a broadsider, or a pasquinader, or a tawny moroccoite, 
or a gilt- topper, or a marbled insider, or an editio princeps 
man, or any other of the innumerable species which the 
author of "The Book-Hunter" has defined. Who will 
say that this is not as innocent a hobby as any of the list? 

It is true that the book-hunter, — the mere bibliomane 



342 BOOK -BUYING. 

or bibliotaphe, as distinguished from the bibliophile, the 
true lover of books, — is often an utter stranger to the 
contents of the volumes he amasses; 

"Horace he has by many different hands. 
But not one Horace that he understands." 

It was a genuine bibliomane who is reported to have said 
contemptuously of a well-known scholar, — "He know 
about books! Nothing, nothing at all, I assure you, 
unless, perhaps, about their insides." The value of a 
book, with this class, lies solely in its rarity, and they 
feel as did the English auctioneer, who, when the high 
bids at a book sale began to slacken, remonstrated pathetic- 
ally: "Going so low as thirty shillings, gentlemen, — this 
curious book, — so low as thirty shillings, and quite imper- 
fect.'* While we can pardon these enthusiasts, and even 
the bibliognostes, who are learned only in title-pages 
and editions, and presses, and places of issue, we enter- 
tain no such feeling toward the bibliotaphes, long-pursed 
wretches, who get possession of a unique copy and lock 
it up. " There were known," says Mr. Burton, in his 
admirable volume, " The Book-Hunter, " " to be just two 
copies of a spare quarto, called ' Rout upon Rout, or the 
Babblers Rabbled,' by Felix Nixon, Gent. A certain- col- 
lector possessed one copy; the other, by indomitable per- 
severance, he also got hold of, and then his heart was. 
glad within him; and he felt it glow with well-merited 
pride when an accomplished scholar, desiring to complete 
an epoch in literary history on which that book threw some 
light, besought the owner to allow him a sight of it, were 
it but for a few minutes, and the request was refused. ' I 
might as well ask him,' said the animal, who was rather 
proud of his firmness than ashamed of his churlishness, 



BOOK - BUYING. 343 

* to make me a present of his brains and reputation.' " 
It is said the same fiendish spirit sometimes enters the mild 
bosom of the Dutch tulip fancier; and he has been known 
to pay thousands of dollars for a duplicate tuber, that he 
may have the satisfaction of crushing it beneath his heel. 
Dibdin warmed his convivial guests at a fire fed by the 
wood-cuts which had been printed from in the impression 
of the " Bibliographical Decameron," ' so that the sub- 
scribers to his costly volumes might not be troubled with 
the ghost of a doubt that poor men would ever partici- 
pate in their privilege. 

The prices which bibliomanes are sometimes reported 
as paying for their coveted treasures almost stagger be- 
lief. At the sale of Mr. Perkins's library, in London, in 
1873, a "first folio' 1 of Shakspeare sold for £585; Chris- 
tine de Pisan's " Cent Histories de Troie," an " exquisite 
vellum manuscript full of miniatures/' was knocked 
down for £650; and a fine manuscript copy of John 
Lydgate's " Siege of Troy," for £1,620 ! But the most 
"fabulous" price was that paid on the last day of the 
sale for a vellum copy of the famous Gutenberg and 
Fust Bible, of which only eight other copies are known 
to exist. For this precious book, — "the most important 
and distinguished work in the annals of typography," — 
the first edition of the Holy Scriptures, — the first book 
printed with movable metal types by the inventors of the 
art of printing. — the enormous sum of £3,400 was paid! 
Seventeen thousand dollars for a single book ?— enough 
money to buy a large private library. This surpasses the 
sale, made immortal by Dibdin, of the copy of Boccaccio 
published by Valdarfer, at Venice, in 1471. The sale of 
the Duke of Roxburgh's library, to which it belonged, 






344 BOOK - BUYING. 

took place in May, 1812, and lasted forty-two days. 
Among the distinguished company who attended the sale 
were the Duke of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, and the Duke 
of Marlborough, then Marquis of Blandford. The bid 
stood at five hundred guineas. " A thousand guineas, 1 ' 
said Earl Spencer. "And ten," added the Marquis. You 
might have heard a pin drop. All eyes were turned, — 
all breathing well nigh stopped, — every sword was put 
home within its scabbard, except that which each of these 
champions brandished in his valorous hand. " Two thou- 
sand pounds,' 1 said the Marquis. The Earl Spencer be- 
thought him like a prudent general of useless bloodshed 
and waste Of powder, and had paused a quarter of a 
minute, when Lord Althorp with long steps came to his 
side, as if to bring his father a fresh lance to renew the 
fight. Father and son whispered together, and Earl Spen- 
cer exclaimed, " Two thousand two hundred and fifty 
pounds! 11 An electric shock went through the assembly. 
" And ten, 11 quietly added the Marquis. This ended the 
strife. Mr. Evans, ere he let the hammer fall, paused; the 
ebony instrument seemed to be charmed or suspended " in 
mid air 11 ; the spectators stood aghast when the hammer 
fell, and the echo of its fall sounded on the farthest shores 
of Italy. The tap of that hammer was heard in the libra- 
ries of Rome, Milan, and Venice. Boccaccio started in his 
sleep of five hundred years, and M. Van Praet groped 
in vain amidst the royal alcoves in Paris, to detect a 
copy of the famed Valdarfer Boccaccio.* 

The most discouraging feature of the mania for book- 
collecting is, that it grows by what it feeds on, and be- 
comes the more insatiable the more it is gratified. It is 

*Dibdin'8 li Bibliographical Decameron." 



BOOK - BUYING 345 

hard for ordinary book-lovers to comprehend a desire for 
books so devouring as that which consumed Richard 
Heber. The number of his books was stated in six fig- 
ures, and the catalogue of them filled five thick octavo 
volumes. He built a library at his house in Hodnet, 
which was said to be full. His- residence at Pimlico, 
London, was filled, like Magliabecchi's at Florence, with 
books from the top to the bottom, — every chair, table, 
and passage containing piles of erudition. He had an- 
other house in York street, laden from the ground floor 
to the garret with curious books. He had a library in 
High street, Oxford; an immense library in Paris; an- 
other at Antwerp; another at Brussels; another at Ghent; 
and yet others at other places in the Low Countries and 
in Germany. When any one raised a cut bono query of 
wonder at this, his answer was ready: "Why, sir, you 
see no man can comfortably do without three copies of a 
book. One he must have for a show-copy, and he will 
probably keep it at his country-house; another he will 
require for his own use and reference; and, unless he is 
inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or 
risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have a 
third at the service of his friends." 

It is said that, some years ago, a book-hunting Arch- 
deacon in England, going up to London to be examined 
on some question before the House of Commons, suddenly 
disappeared, with all his money in his pocket, and his 
friends, with many misgivings of foul play, wondered 
what had become of him. Suddenly he returned home 
one day, penniless, followed by a wagon containing three 
hundred and seventy-two copies of rare editions of the 
Bible. Who will judge harshly of a case like this? How 



346 BOOK - BUYING. 

glaring the contrast between the victim of such a mania 
and the de grege Epicuri porous, who squanders his money 
upon the luxuries of the table, or him who wastes it upon 
ostentatious upholstery, — upon wall-papers that cost $3 a 
roll, or carpets that cost $5 a yard! 

But is there no cure for the disease? None that we 
have heard of, except downright " impecuniosity." It is, 
indeed, hydra-headed; extirpate one of its manifestations, 
and it crops out in fifty new forms and ways. Generally 
it rages more and more fiercely in the patient, until he 
lias gathered together more books, and " things in books 1 
clothing," as Lamb calls them, than he can find conven- 
ient room for; or, if he has wisely collected on some 
single branch of literature or science, he finds, sooner or 
later, an impenetrable barrier to the progress of his 
hobby, with whatever spirit he may spur its stuffed sides. 
He opens his eyes some day to the fact that, although 
one book, and yet another, and another, fill but little 
space, yet an aggregate of volumes may clamor as loudly 
for more room as an aggregate of more vulgar wares, 
and that heaps of books never read nor consulted may 
be as much in the way as heaps of other lumber. If he 
lives in a hired house, this fact is more deeply impressed 
on his mind by a migratory May-day; soon after which, 
if he can screw up his courage to the sticking-point, he 
ransacks his hecatombs of musty old tomes, prunes out 
those which are dear to him as " the ruddy drops that 
visit his sad heart," and packs off the rest to an auction 
room, to be fought for by a fresh horde of enthusiastic 
bibliomaniacs. 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 



"Scent to match thy rich perfume, 
Chymic art did ne'er presume. 
Through her quaint alembic strain, 
None so sovereign to the brain." 

SO sings the quaint, dear, gentle Elia, in his chaunt 
to the Virginia weed; and a passionate lover of it 
he was, in all its witching forms of pigtail, roll, and 
titillating dust. How ardent was his devotion to the 
plant, is well known to all who have read his " Farewell 
to Tobacco, 1 ' in which, after ironically abusing it with 
all sorts of hard names, he abruptly turns traitor (a good 
traitor) to the side he had espoused, and, archly declaring 
his hatred was but feigned, concludes by asserting his 
resolve still to retain 

" — a seat 'mong the joys 
Of the bless'd tobacco boys." 

where, though he may be debarred by sour physician the 
full luxury of the plant, he yet 

" — may catch 
Some collateral sweets, and snatch 
Sidelong odours, that give life 
Like glances from a neighbor's wife.'" 

The struggle which Lamb has so vividly depicted, 
between his love for tobacco and his acquiescence in the 
necessity which severed him from it, is one through which 
millions of human beings have passed; and, almost invari- 
ably, with the same result. Who, that ever fell under 

347 



348 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 

the sorcery of the weed, has not again and again resolved 
. to escape from its spell, — racking the vocabulary for 
epithets with which to curse it, and yet again and 
again yielding to the siren, affirming 

" 'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee, 
None e'er prospered who defamed thee." 

If logic and learning, satire and eloquence, could " kill off" 
a plant, tobacco would ages ago have ceased to be chewed, 
smoked, or snuffed. Alphonse Karr declares that, had it 
been a useful plant, it could never have survived the 
assaults made upon it. Had any statesman, he adds, 
before tobacco was discovered, proposed, for the purposes 
of revenue, to introduce so nauseous and poisonous an 
article among the people; had he declared it his intention 
to offer it for sale, chopped up into pieces, or reduced 
to powder, telling them that the consequences of chewing, 
snuffing, or smoking it would be only heart-pains, stomach- 
pains, vertigoes, cholics, convulsions, vomitings of blood, 
etc., — that's all; the project would have been ridiculed as 
absurd. " My good friend," would have been the reply 
of every sane listener to the scheme, " nobody will dis- 
pute with you the privilege of selling a thing of which 
there will be no buyers. You would have a far better 
chance of success, should you open a shop and write 
over it 

KICKS ARE SOLD HERE! 

or 

HORSEWHIPPINGS SOLD HERE, 
WHOLESALE AND RETAIL." 

And yet the speculation has succeeded, and tobacco and 
its praises are in almost every man's mouth. Kings have 
forbidden it; popes have anathematized it; physicians have 
warned against it; and even clergymen have thundered 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 349 

their denunciations of it from- the pulpit; but in spite 
of declamations, and " counterblasts," and sarcasms, it 
continues to be rooted in the affections of its votaries, 
who greet it with the cry — 

11 Hail, sole cosmopolite, Tobacco, hail! 

Shag, long-cut, short-cut, pigtail, quid, or roll, 
Dark Negrohead, or Orinooka pale, 
In every form congenial to the soul." 

Gentle reader, we are no slave of the weed; but, should 
we ever become one, as in our weakness we may, we 
shall have a decided choice as to the form of our servitude, 
and shall incline to the powdered article as the least 
objectionable to our senses. Chant as you may the praises 
of chewing and smoking, they are but wretched ways of 
extracting the juices of the plant, and, if for no other 
reason, would be without a charm to us, by the vulgar 
commonness to which they are degraded. Inconvenient 
and laborious, they are at the same time uncleanly, offensive 
to one (and that the better) half of humanity, and, it is 
hardly too much to say, that no man who is addicted to 
them can expect-to -rate as a gentleman. 

But snuff-taking is not only a more delicate and refined 
operation per se, but the number and character of those 
engaged in it show it to be at once a dignified and an 
aristocratic practice. It requires a certain fineness and 
delicacy of perception to apprehend the virtues of fine 
Spanish; and hence the vulgar part of the community, 
whose senses take cognizance of the coarser scents and 
substances, — who dine off the most strongly-flavored dishes, 
and, when they drink, want their wine brandied, every 
glass a headache, — almost universally "turn up their 
noses" at the pleasures of the box. Add to this, that 



350 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 

snuff- takers are, almost entirely, a serious, reflecting race; 
no men know better than they that things are not always 
what they seem at first blush, and that it is dangerous 
to approach to an examination of them bluntly and with 
uncleared optics. A snuff-taker, before he looks into any 
grave question, is careful to take his pinch; and then, as 
Leigh Hunt observes, if any fallacy comes before him, he 
shakes the imposture, like the remnant of the pinch, to 
atoms, with one "flesh-quake" of head, thumb, and indif- 
ference. Or should he " look into some little nicety of 
question or of creation, — of the intellectual or the visible 
world, — he, having sharpened his eyesight with another 
pinch, and put his head into proper cephalick condition, 
discerns it, as it were, microscopically, and pronounces 
that there is ' more in it than the un- snuff -taking would 
suppose. 1 " Hence, doubtless, it is, that the phrase " up 
to snuff" is a synonym for keenness and quickness of 
intellectual vision. 

But it is not merely on philosophical grounds that we 
prefer this form of using tobacco. It has authority in 
its favor. If we turn over the pages of modern biog- 
raphy, we shall find hardly a man whose name has been 
emblazoned high on fame's scroll, that was not a votary 
of snuff. Talleyrand used to declare that diplomacy was 
impossible without it. It was indispensable, he argued, 
to politicians, as it gives them time for thought in answer- 
ing awkward questions while pretending only to indulge 
in a pinch. Among his snuff-boxes was one which was 
double, being two snuff-boxes joined together by a com- 
mon bottom. The one was politely offered to his acquaint- 
ance; the other, never to be profaned by the finger and 
thumb of a second person, was reserved for himself, — a 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 351 

precaution in which we recognize the arch-diplomate, 
who was so eternally on his guard, that, when a lady 
requested his autograph, he wrote his name on the very 
top of the sheet of paper handed to him. Pope tells us, 
in his " Key to the Lock," that the Prince Eugene was 
a great taker of snuff as well as of towns. Frederic the 
Great had a collection of 1,500 snuff-boxes, and he loved 
the dust so well that he had capacious pockets made to 
his waistcoat, to get at it readily. " Glorious John Dry- 
den" was a liberal patron of snuff, and in his later 
years, was peculiarly fastidious in the article, abhor ring- 
all ordinary snuffs, and satisfied only with a mixture 
which he himself prepared. When from his chair in 
Will's Coffee House he issued those literary decrees which 
ruled the judgment of the town, he was never without 
the stimulant; and for a young author, on visiting Will's, 
to receive a pinch from Dryden's snuff-box, was equiva- 
lent to a formal admission into the society of wits. It 
has been said that you might as soon divorce the idea 
of the Popes, Steeles, and Voltaires, from their wigs and 
caps, as from their snuff-boxes. 

Beau Brummell, who so long was the glass of fashion, 
had a gorgeous collection of snuff-boxes, and was distin- 
guished for the grace with which he opened the lid of 
his box, with the thumb of the hand that carried it, 
while he delicately took his pinch with two fingers of 
the other. His claim to be the leader of the beau rnonde 
was based not more on his walk, his coat, and his cra- 
vat, than on the inimitable and distingue manner with 
which, — snatching "a grace beyond the reach of art," — 
he indulged in the " nasal pastime," as his biographer 
terms it, of taking snuff. The great literary leviathan, 



352 A PI^CH OF SKUFF. 

Dr. Johnson, was fond of the delicious dust; and so lavish 
was he in the use of it, that he was wont to take it 
from a waistcoat pocket, instead of from a box. The 
gloom of his life might have deepened into a profounder 
melancholy, had he not cheated its ennui by frequent 
pinches of snuff, as well as draughts from the tea-kettle 
that was " never dry. 1 ' Sir Joshua Reynolds had a keen 
zest for this stimulant, and we know not how much the 
exquisite beauty of his pictures may be owing to the 
clearness which it gave to his brain and his optics. 
When bored with talk about " Raphael, Correggio, and 
stuff," by canting ignoramuses whose shallowness his old- 
fashioned politeness would not allow him to ridicule, he 
found a ready resource in his box: 

" He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff." 

Scott, though he may not have carried it with him, 
was yet fond of an occasional pinch; and Cowper, as all 
know, rescued an hour from melancholy to hymn the 
praises of his favorite weed. It is recorded of the ele- 
gant historian, Gibbon, that, when about to say a good 
thing, he was wont to announce it by a complacent tap 
on his snuff-box. In the silhouette, the profile cut out 
with scissors, which faces the title-page of his " Memoirs," 
he is represented as indulging his habit, and looking, as 
Colman says, 

" Like an erect black tadpole, taking snuff." 

Narrating his journey to Turin, and his presentation at 
Court there at the age of twenty-seven, the historian 
says: " The most sociable women I have met with are the 
King's daughters. I chatted for about a quarter of an 
hour with them, talked about Lausanne, and grew so 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 353 

very free and easy that I drew my snuff-box, rapped it, 
took snuff twice (a crime never known before in the 
presence chamber), and continued my discourse in my 
usual attitude of my body bent forward and my forefinger 
stretched out." Napoleon was a famous snuff-taker, and, 
on the eve of battle, always stimulated his thinking- 
powers by extra quantities of the pulverized weed. Can- 
ning attributed to it half his own victories: " Would 3^011 
confute your opponent in argument?" said he; "learn to 
take snuff, and turn your back!" — a style of reproof 
which we have seen most felicitously practised. Henry 
Clay loved a good pinch; and during one of his fiercest 
encounters with Calhoun, which we witnessed some years 
ago, in the United States Senate, when the two giants 
measured swords with each other some half-dozen times, 
we noticed that he uniformly, each time he advanced to 
the onset, roused and stimulated himself to the height of 
his great argument by drawing on the snuff-box of the 
nearest Senator. 

It is said that some one who was a little skeptical 
about Tom Moore's originality, once asked him whence 
he had derived a particularly brilliant sentiment in one 
of his songs. " Why, I got it," replied the poet, at the 
same moment priming his nose with a stiff pinch, " I got 
it where I got all the rest, to be sure, at Lundy Foot's 
sliop." The poet Crabbe was an ardent votary of snuff; 
and, doubtless, we owe many a fine domestic picture to 
the stimulus of a pinch. We are told that Dr. Parr, too, 
— that famous incarnation of Greek and Latin, — fond as 
he was of smoking (consuming forty pipes a day, accord- 
ing to some authorities), was not niggard in the use of 
snuff. We have already spoken of Charles Lamb: it is 
15* 



354 A PTXCH OF SXFFF. 

said that if a person took snuff heartily, that, alone was 
enough to commend him to Lamb's acquaintance. He 
would understand, by analogy, the pungency of other 
things besides Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. A 
modern essayist, who passed "a day of happy hours" 
alone with Lamb at Islington, speaks of his wild way- 
ward words of wonder as to the sort of snuff he would 
meet with in the Elysium, — and the faint stutterings of 
joy with which he anticipated offering to old Burton a 
fine pinch of Spanish, as pungent as his own wit. 
Doubtless he never would have written his " Farewell 
to Tobacco," had he used it only in the powdered form, 
instead of learning to puff the coarser weed " by toil- 
ing after it as some men toil after virtue.'' Sydney 
Smith, describing the French savant, says it is curious to 
see in what little apartments he lives; "you find him at 
his books, core red with snuff, with a little dog that bites 
your legs." Butler has noted that the saints of Crom- 
well's time were not averse to snuff. He says of one: 

"•He had administered a dose 
Of snuff mnndangus to his nose: 
And powdered the inside- of his skull 
Instead of the outward jobbernole." 

In short, few great or good men have lived since the 
introduction of the weed, who have not consumed it in 
this form; and to have deprived them of the excitement 
which their snuff-boxes afforded would have been, there 
is reason to believe, not only to lessen their happiness 
and sour their tempers, but to rob them in a great de- 
gree of their powers of reflection. 

Again, the snuff-box is a powerful auxiliary to social 
intercourse and enjoyment. By what subtle, mysterious 
influence it operates, we know not: but who has not no- 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 355 

ticed the almost miraculous effect of a little Maccaboy in 
" breaking the ice " and banishing the freezing formali- 
ties of a mixed company, when gracefully tendered by 
one of their number? Who has not observed also what 
a bond of union, what an isthmus of communication, the 
snuff-box is among travelers, even foreigners who know 
not each other's language; how quickly the heart opens 
to the open box of a true gentleman, of whatever coun- 
try he be, or however humble his station? The snuff- 
box has been a powerful engine even in Presidential elec- 
tions, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that to it 
.some of our Chief Magistrates have owed their elevation 
to office. When Madison was candidate for that dignity, 
and was assailed with 'the utmost vehemence of party 
rage, the polite attentions of Mrs. Madison to the chiefs 
of all parties, who met in social intercourse at her house, 
did wonders towards softening the asperities of party 
spirit at the Capital, and electing her husband to the 
Presidency. Her snuff-box, in particular, had a magic 
influence, and its titillating dust seemed as perfect a se- 
curity from hostility as is a participation of bread-and- 
salt among some savage tribes. The kindly feelings thus 
cultivated among those who sneezed together, triumphed, 
we are told, over the animosity of party spirit, and won 
for her husband a popularity to- which his lofty reserve 
and chilling manners would have been an insuperable 
obstacle. The handful of dust with which Virgil ends 
the wars of the bees, but typified the magic power of her 
snuff-box: > 

'• Hi motus animorum, atqne hsec certamina tanta 
Pulvis exigui jactu compressa quiescunt." 

That there is some instinct of our nature which 



356 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 

prompts the use of this stimulus is proved by the fact 
that even anti-tobacconists, who declaim against the weed, 
are guilty, — unconsciously to themselves, — of the exqui- 
site inconsistency of using it in its powdered form. How 
often have we listened to a vehement tirade against to- 
bacco, while ever and anon the orator would pull out a 
silver snuff-box, and sandwich between his sentences a 
most sternutatory pinch! In the reign of Louis XIV, 
Fragon, the physician of the grand monarch, having to 
maintain a thesis against snuff in the schools, was taken 
ill; whereon his place was supplied by a brother medicus, 
who read the thesis, — taking all the while enormous 
quantities of snuff! So true is the remark of Horace, 
that you may pitchfork Nature out of your presence, but 

•• — usqne recurret. 
Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix." 

Few things are more interesting than to notice the 
different ways in which men take snuff. A thorough and 
critical knowledge of these would, no doubt, add largely 
to our acquaintance with psychology, and perhaps give 
us a profounder insight into men's characters, — their 
secret thoughts and hidden motives of action, — than 
physiognomy or phrenology. On this head, Leigh Hunt 
observes, with his usual felicity, that " some men take 
snuff by little fits and starts, and get over the thing 
quickly. These are epigrammatic snuff-takers, who come 
to the point as fast as possible, and to whom pungency 
is everything. They generally use a sharp and severe 
snuff, — a sort of essence of pins' points. Others are all 
urbanity and polished demeanor; they value the style as 
much as the sensation, and offer the box around them as 
much out of dignity as benevolence. Some take snuff 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 357 

irritably, others bashfully, others in a manner as dry as 
the snuff itself, generally with an economy of the vege- 
table; others with a luxuriance of gesture, and a lavish- 
ness of supply, that announces a moister article, and 
sheds its superfluous honors over neckcloth and coat, 
Dr. Johnson's was probably a snuff of this kind.' 1 About 
a century ago a fashion prevailed among snuff-takers of 
administering the powder to the nose with a little spoon 
or ladle, in allusion to which Samuel Wesley expressed 
a fear that the human ear would not long remain exempt 
from its application: 

" To such a height with some is fashion grown. 
They feed their very nostrils with a spoon; 
One, and but one degree, is wanting yet 
To make their senseless luxury complete; 
Some choice regale, useless as snuff and dear, 
To feed the mazy windings of the ear. 1 ' 

But to leave these references to authority, and glance 
at some additional advantages of snuff- taking : — what 
pleasure is there, we ask, comparable to the luxury of a 
sneeze? We love a good laugh, it is true, and agree 
with Charles Lamb that it is worth a hundred groans in 
any state of the market. Its delicious alchemy can con- 
vert even tears into the quintessence of merriment, and 
make wrinkles themselves expressive of youth and frolic. 
But who will pretend that it sends such an electric thrill 
through the frame as a sudden sternutation? The former 
may convulse by degrees; but it is the last only which 
can instantly electrify the nerves, brighten every sense, 
clear away the cobwebs from the brain, and give the 
whole system a shock to which the effect of the voltaic 
pile is as nothing. Who, that has ever experienced the 
titillating sensation, — at least, when produced artificially, 



?>>K A PIXCH OF SNUFF. 

— can forget the ecstatic feelings that accompanied and 
followed the paroxysm? Truly has it been said that 
" one seems to himself suddenly to he endowed with a 
sixth sense,*' opening to him a world of wonders, and 
teaching him to contemplate the possession of a thousand 
delicate nerves before unth ought of. Hardly are the se- 
ries of sneezes over, 'ere the slight premonitory tickling 
at the nose is felt again, and he tries, by various per- 
suasive arts, to coax forth another; he draws his breath 
through his nostrils, — he moves his head to and fro with 
an ish-i, — he thinks intensely of his last sneeze. — when 
suddenly the titillation begins again, and away he goes, 

— sn-sn-sneeze ! 

li Sudden with starting tears each eye o'erflows, 
And the high dome re-echoes to the nose!" 

According to a late writer the following is the scien- 
tific explanation of a sneeze: — The nose receives three 
sets of nerves, — the nerves of smell, those of feeling, and 
those of motion. The first communicate to the brain the 
odorous properties of substances with which they may 
come in contact, in a diffused or concentrated state ; the 
second communicate the impressions of touch: the third 
move the muscles of the nose; but the power of these 
muscles is very limited. When a sneeze occurs all these 
faculties are excited to a high degree. A grain of snuff 
excites the olfactory nerves, which dispatch to the brain 
the intelligence that " snuff has attacked the nostril." 
The brain instantly sends a mandate through the motor 
nerves to the muscles, saying, "Cast it out!" and the 
result is unmistakable. So offensive is the enemy besieg- 
ing the nostril held to be, that the nose is not left to its 
own defense. It would be too feeble to accomplish this. 



A Pixm OF SNUFF. 359 

An allied army of muscles join in the rescue, — nearly 
one-half the body arouses against the intruder, — from 
the muscles of the lips to those of the abdomen, all unite 
in the effort for the expulsion of the grain of snuff. 

A modern poet, who, though he would doubtless object 
to having his nose pulled, yet holds it ever ready for a 
pinch, has the following picturesque- description of a 
sneeze: 

•What a moment! What a doubt! — 
All my nose, inside and out. 
All my thrilling, tickling, caustic 
Pyramid rhinocerostic 
Wants to sneeze, and cannot, do it! 

Now it yearns me. thrills me. stings me. 

Now with rapturous torment wrings me; 
Now says ' Sneeze, you fool, get through it.' 
What shall help me? — Oh! Good Heaven! 
Ah — yes. thank ye — Thirty-seven — 
Shee — shee — Oh. 'tis most Hel-ishi 
IxJd — ishi — most de]-ishi 
(Hang it! I shall sneeze till spring) 
Snuff's a most delicious thing.'" 

Who can conceive of a more innocent luxury than this? 
What language, then, can paint the cruelty of the cynic 
who would rob men of this enjoyment? — as did Amu- 
rath IV. who. in 1625, forbade his subjects the use of 
snuff under the penalty of having the nose cut off: and 
the Grand Duke of Moscow, by whom the Muscovite who 
was found snuffing was condemned to have his nostrils 
split. Pope Urban VIII and Innocent XII were compar- 
atively excusable when they anathematized all snuff-takers 
who committed the heinous sin of taking a pinch in 
church: nor will any devotee of the dust execrate the 
memory of " Good Queen Bess," because she added to the 
penalty of excommunication in such cases by authorizing 
the parish beadle to confiscate the snuff-box to his own 



360 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 

use. These were harsh penalties for so trivial an offense; 
but there is a time and place for all things; and absti- 
nence from Maccaboy during the hours of church service, 
so far from robbing its lover of any pleasure on the 
whole, would only give a finer edge to his subsequent 
enjoyment. But to subject men to the death-penalty for 
the use of snuff, — to bore a hole through their noses, as 
did Mahomet IV, — to compel the offenders, as once did 
the Shah of Persia, to expatriate themselves in order to 
enjoy this "virtuous vice," — does it not seem a stretch 
of tyranny too violent for belief? And how paltry and 
picayunish appear the calculations of such minute philos- 
ophers as Lord Stanhope, who estimated that, in forty 
years of a snuff-taker's life, two entire years would be 
spent in tickling his nose, and two more in blowing it, 
and concluded that a proper application of the time and 
money thus lost to the public might constitute a fund 
for the discharge of England's national debt! Out upon 
such utilitarian suggestions, worthy of the mean " age of 
calculators and economists ! " Hearken unto Boswell, as 
he sings in his "Shrubs of Parnassus": 

"O snuff! our fashionable end and aim, 
Strasburgh, Rappee, Dutch, Scotch, whate'er thy name; 
Powder celestial! quintessence divine! 
New joys entrance my soul, while thou art mine. 
By thee assisted, ladies kill the day, 
And breathe their scandal freely o'er their tea; 
Not less they prize thy virtues when in bed; 
One pinch of thee revives the vapored head, 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and tickles in the sneeze." 

Apropos to sneezing, it is a question which has long 
tormented the wits of antiquaries, whence came the custom 
of saying "God bless you!" to one who sneezes. Many 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 361 

writers ascribe it to an ordinance of Pope St. Gregory, 
at whose time the air was so pestilential that they who 
sneezed instantly expired. On this the pontiff, it is said, 
instituted a short benediction to be pronounced on such 
persons, to save them from the fatal effects of this malig- 
nancy. The Rabbins, however, declare that before Jacob 
men sneezed but once in a lifetime, and then immediately 
died; and that the memory of this was- ordered to be pre- 
served in all nations, by a command of every prince to his 
subjects to employ some salutary exclamation after the act 
of sternutation. Whatever the origin of the custom, it 
has prevailed among^ all nations, and was found to exist 
even in the New World, on its first discovery by the 
Spaniards. Among the ancients, the distinctions made 
about sneezing raised it to an art; for while it was 
unlucky in the afternoon, or when men were clearing away 
food, or if it occurred three times, or more than four, or 
on the left-hand side. — if it occurred among persons in 
deliberation, or two or four times, or in the morning, or on 
the right-hand side, it was accounted a lucky omen. We 
are told that Themistocles, by a judicious sneeze on his 
right-hand side, persuaded his soldiers to fight, and Xeno- 
phon, by a similar act in the middle of a speech, was 
elected General. On another occasion, a sneeze from a 
linesman just before a battle was considered so ominous 
that public prayers were deemed necessary in consequence. 
An old writer says that the ancients were accustomed 
to go to bed again,' if they sneezed while putting on their 
shoes. Catullus, in one of his charming poems, makes 
Cupid sneeze his approbation of two lovers. When the 
King of Mesopotamia sneezes, he is greeted with shouts 
in the ante-chamber, shouts in the palace-yard, and 
16 



362 A PINCH OK SNUFF. 

shouts in the city streets, echoed and reverberated by 
a thousand loyal voices. Supposing his majesty to be 
an inveterate snuff-taker, what horrid cries must rend 
the air of his capital "'from morn till dewy eve"! 
According to mythology, the first sign of life given by 
Prometheus's artificial man was a sneeze, caused by the 
solar rays stealing through his pores. The Siamese wish 
long life to persons sneezing. The reason, according to 
Brande, is, they believe that when one of the judges of 
hell opens the register in which the duration of men's 
lives is written, and looks upon any particular leaf, all 
those whose names chance to be entered on it never fail 
to sneeze immediately. In Vienna, if one sneezes in a cafe, 
the bystanders will doff their hats, and say " God be with 
you ! " The lower class of modern Romans greet a sneezer 
with the salutation, "May you have male children! 1 ' 
Milton says that earthquakes, 

"— though mortals fear them 
As dangerous to the pillared frame of heaven, 
Or to the earth's dark basis underneath. 
Are to the main as inconsiderable 
And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze 
To man's less universe, and soon are gone." 

Perhaps the most terrific sneeze on record is that de- 
scribed by Martelli, an Italian writer, in his Bambociata, 
or Sneezing of Hercules, a marionette farce, from which 
Swift borrowed the idea of his Voyage to Laputa. In 
this piece Hercules is represented as reaching the land 
of the Pigmies, who, alarmed at the sight of what seems 
a living mountain, hide themselves in caves. One day, 
as Hercules is sleeping in the open fields, the Pigmies 
venture forth from their hiding places, and, armed with 
boughs and thorns, mount the sleeping monster, and 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 863 

cover him from head to foot like flies covering a piece 
of raw meat. Hercules awakes, and, feeling something- 
tickling his nose, sneezes. His enemies are routed, " horse, 
foot, and dragoons, 11 and tumble precipitately from his 
sides, — when the curtain falls, and the piece ends. 

A powerful argument for snuif- taking in preference 
to other modes of using the weed, is, that one does not 
have to serve a long and disagreeable apprenticeship be- 
fore he acquires a full mastery of the art and revels in 
the highest pleasures of snuffing. Unlike the tobacco- 
chewer or other consumer of the weed, who has to strug- 
gle heroically through its repugnant qualities of taste and 
effect, until by habit its stimulus grows pleasurable and 
the system gets mithridated against the poison, the snuff- 
taker, at the very threshold of his career, is placed on a 
level with the most veteran practitioners of the art. 
Another argument for this form of the weed is, that the 
snuff- taker is rarely guilty of such outrageous excesses in 
its use as are habitual with the chewer and the smoker. 
The lover of the pipe and the cigar puffs out his volumes 
of smoke from dawn till bed-time, — 

"Faucibus ingentem ftimnm, mirabile dictu, 
Evomit involvitque domum caligine caeca"; 

the devotee of raw cavendish " chews the cud of sweet 
and bitter fancy 11 from the moment he wakes in the 
morning till he drops to sleep at night; and some 
wretches, not satisfied with this, resort to what is called 
''plugging, 1 ' — that is, thrusting long pellets or rolls of 
tobacco up the nose, and keeping them there during the 
entire night. Sir Walter Raleigh, who first made smok- 
ing fashionable in England, was a type of the whole 
tribe of smokers. Though an elegant courtier, he smoked 



$64 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 

to the disgust of the ladies at court, smoked as he sat to 
see his friend Essex perish on the scaffold, and smoked 
just before he went to the scaffold himself. Robert Hall 
used to smoke till the last moment before ascending the 
pulpit, and resumed his pipe as soon as he came down. 
When a friend sought to convince him that tobacco was 
sapping his health, he replied: "I can't answer your 
arguments, and I can't give up my pipe.'' 

That snuff- taking may be, and is, abused, — that, like 
all other innocent enjoyments, it may be carried to such 
excess as to undermine the health, and even cause death, 
— is true; and it is upon this abuse that all the argu- 
ments against it are founded. The nose is the emunctory 
of the brain, and when its functions are impeded, the 
whole system of the head is deranged. One of the effects 
of excessive snuffing is to deaden the nerves of the nose, 
which are endowed with exquisite sensibility, and traverse 
with their fine net-work the entire inner membrane of 
the nostril. Drying up the secretion which lubricates 
this membrane, it gradually destroys the sense of smell, 
and the result is, that of all the pleasures derived from 
the olfactory organs,' — the omnis copia narium, as Horace 
terms it, — the snuff-taker knows as little as if he were 
noseless. Similar effects ensue upon the saliva, and the 
sense of taste is blunted. An inveterate snuff-taker may 
always be recognized by his brown, sodden complexion, — 
by a certain nasal twang or asthmatic wheezing when he 
tries to speak, — and by a sort of disagreeable noise in 
respiration, which resembles incipient snoring. Snuff, 
intemperately taken, is a deadly foe to the memory. 
The Abbe Moigno, an eminent French savant, who in 
1861 took twenty grammes a day. found this faculty 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 365 

rapidly decaying in consequence of the habit. He had 
learned some fifteen hundred root-words in each of several 
languages, but found these gradually dropping out of his 
mind, so as to necessitate frequent recurrence to diction- 
aries. Quitting the use of tobacco in all its forms, he 
found, after six years of abstinence, that his memory had 
recovered all its riches, all its sensibility. The army of 
words, which had run away, had all -gradually returned. 
Snuff, taken in enormous quantities, also causes fleshy 
excrescences in the nose, tumors and polypi in the throat, 
vomitings, loss of appetite, dyspepsia, — is a frequent cause 
of blindness, and is said to induce convulsions, promote 
consumption, and even to cause madness and death. Na- 
poleon's death is attributed to a morbid state of the 
stomach, superinduced by excessive snuffing; and Dr. 
Rush tells us that Sir John Pringle, who was afflicted 
with tremors in his hands and an impaired memory, 
through the use of snuff, recovered his recollection and 
the use of his hands by abandoning the dust at the sug- 
gestion of Dr. Franklin. As if this catalogue of ills to 
which the snuff-taker is liable were not fearful enough, 
other imaginary ones have been added; and grave doctors 
have gone so far as to declare that his brain will be 
found after death to be dried to a sort of dirty mem- 
brane, clogged with soot! 

These facts, however, are not solid objections to snuff 
itself; they only show that it may be taken in excess, or 
may not be suited to one's peculiar idiosyncrasies of con- 
stitution or temperament. Would you chop off men"s 
fingers, because they are sometimes pickers and stealers? 
Or is the fact that some men make gluttons of themselves 
an argument for the abolition of eating? No one abstains 



366 A PINCH OF SXUFF. 

from veal pie because a greedy fool once died of eating 
a whole calf; and the excellence of sherry at dinner is 
not disputed because unlimited Old Bourbon induces de- 
lirium tremens. There are men so strangely constituted 
that they cannot digest even lamb or mutton, and whom 
the bare sight or smell of certain healthful articles of 
food throws into spasms. The Duke d'Epernon fainted at 
the sight of a leveret; and Marshal de Breze, who died 
in 1689, swooned at the sight of a rabbit. Erasmus could 
not smell fish without being thrown into a fever, and 
Scaliger shuddered in every limb on seeing water-cresses. 
Favoriti, a famous Italian poet, could not bear the odor 
of a rose. 

The gravest objection to snuff is the adulterations to 
which it is subjected. When adulterated, as it too often 
is, with pepper, hellebore, and pulverized glass, to give it 
additional pungency, its effects must be anything but bene- 
ficial. Add to these the ferruginous earths, such as red 
and yellow ochre, and no less than three poisonous prepa- 
rations, viz.: chromate of lead, red lead, and bi-chromate 
of potash, — which, according to the London "Lancet" 
Commission, are introduced into it, — and its deleterious 
effects are frightfully aggravated. At a meeting of the 
Philosophical Society of Manchester, England, Dr. C. Cal- 
vert stated that he had recently analyzed several samples 
of snuff, in all of which he had found traces of red lead, 
and of the bi-chromate of potash, which is still more fre- 
quently employed. M. Duchatel, of Paris, found that a 
dose from one twenty-fifth to one five-hundredth of a 
grain sufficed to destroy a dog. Colic, " dropped hands,' 1 
and other forms of paralysis, are among the least effects 
of this deadly poison. Statements like this are not to be 



A PIXCH OF SNUFF. 367 

sneezed at; but, added to the fact that it is the scented 
snuffs that are most unwholesome, as they hide the adul- 
teration, and that it is not unusual to save the sweepings 
of tobacco-shops and warehouses, even the bits of leaf 
that adhere to the shoes, for the purpose of mixing in 
snuff, — must make even the most hardened and incorri- 
gible snuffer pause ere he again converts his nose into a 
dust-hole and a soot-bag. 

Considering how the practice of snuff- taking tends to 
spoil the complexion, it seems strange that ladies should 
ever become addicted to it. The fact that, by the drain 
of the juices, it tends to injure the muscles of the face, 
to furrow and corrugate the skin, and to give a gaunt, 
withered, and jaundiced appearance to " the human face 
divine," would be enough, one would think, — saying noth- 
ing of damage to the health, — to deter any woman from 
touching the "high-dried pulvillio. 11 Yet in the days of 
Queen Anne and Louis XV, as we have already hinted, 
the practice was fashionable, not only with old ladies, 
who still cling to it, but with those who had their con- 
quests yet to make, and whom time had not begun to 
rob of their charms. Leigh Hunt remarks that the 
ladies in the time of the Voltaires and the Du Chatelets 
seemed never to think themselves either too old to love, 
or too young to take snuff. A bridegroom in one of the 
British essayists, describing his wife's fondness for rouge 
and carmine, complains that he can never make pure, 
unsophisticated way to her cheek, but is obliged, like Pyr- 
amus in the story, to kiss through a wall, — to salute 
through a crust of paints and washes: 

"Wall, vile wall, which did these lovers sunder." 

This, it has been well observed, "is bad enough; yet the 



368 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 

object of paint is to imitate health and loveliness; the 
wish to look well is in it." But snuff ! what a death- 
blow does it give to all that romance and poetry with 
which man delights to invest the other sex! How vulgar 
the thought that a sneeze should interrupt a kiss or a 
sigh! Fancy a young beauty, to whom her lover on his 
knees, after a protracted and sentimental courtship, has 
just closed a tremulous avowal of his passion with the 
despairing interrogatory, " C-a-n I 1-i-v-e?" sneezing out, 
at this very pinch of the game, what would otherwise be 
one of the sweetest of loving and bashful replies: "Oh! 
Edward! this is so un-un-un-unexpected ! " What sylph, 
foreseeing the possibility of such a catastrophe, would 
superintend the conveyance of this dust to the nostrils 
of a belle! What gnome would not take a fiendish de- 
light in hovering over a snuff-loving beauty! 

The question who invented snuff-taking is an interest- 
ing one on which antiquaries differ. That Catherine de 
Medicis, who instigated the horrid massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew, is entitled to the honor of so philanthropic an 
act, we shall not believe. If she did originate the practice, 
it was from any but philanthropic motives. It is well 
known that when she wished to get rid of offensive per- 
sons in an " artistic " manner, she was in the habit of 
presenting them with delicately made sweetmeats, or 
trinkets, in which death lurked in the most engaging- 
forms; and perhaps she had the same end in view, in 
inventing and offering snuff. Whoever invented it, it 
was at the court of the grand monarch, Louis XIV, that 
snuff, with all its expensive corollaries of scents and cu- 
rious boxes, first received the highest sanction, so that 
Moliere speaks of it as ' le passion des honnetes gens. In 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 369 

England, it became common after the great plague, from 
a belief that tobacco, in all its forms, prevented infection. 
Its use is also said to have increased very much after 
Sir George Rooke's expedition to Spain, great quantities 
having been taken and sold as prizes. Howell, in a letter 
on Tobacco (1646), says that the Spanish and Irish " take 
it most in powder or smutchin, and it mightily refreshes 
the brain 1 '; and he adds that the serving-maids and the 
swains at the plow, when overtired with labor, " take out 
their boxes of smutchin, and draw it into their nostrils 
with a quill, and it will beget new spirits in them, with 
a fresh orjour to fall to their work again." 

When William of Holland ascended the British throne, 
the prevalence of the Dutch taste confirmed the general 
use of snuff, and it was the fashion to be curious in its 
use. Valuable boxes of all styles were sported, and the 
beaux carried canes with hollow heads, that they might 
the more conveniently inhale a few grains through the 
perforations, as they sauntered in the fashionable prom- 
enades. Rich essences were employed to flavor snuff, and 
a taste in such scents was considered a necessary part of a 
refined education. Now,' snuff-taking has become a prac- 
tice as wide-spread among civilized people as chewing or 
smoking, — is the favorite mode of consuming the weed 
with men of culture, quick intellects, and elegant tastes: 
and in every country, the boxes, — which are the favorite 
presents of kings to their favorites, — are devised hardly 
less ingeniously, and ornamented far more expensively, 
than pipes. At the coronation of George IV, the bill of 
Messrs. Rundell and Bridge for snuff-boxes to foreign 
ministers, was £8,205 15s. 5d. It is estimated that in 
France not less than six millions of persons take snuff, 



370 A PIXCH OF SNUF-F. 

consuming each two and a half pounds annually, at an 
expense of over ten francs per nose! The bare duty paid 
upon tobacco and snuff in England and Scotland aver- 
aged in 1850 more than twenty-eight millions of dollars 
annually! — a prodigious amount to be blown away in 
smoke, or sneezed away in dust, at a time when the gov- 
ernment was higgling on a paltry sum of £100,000 for 
national education. It is -an interesting fact that snuff- 
ing is more a Scotch habit than an English or Irish one. 
We are told that an Edinburgh tobacconist, who made a 
large fortune by the sale of snuff, had painted on his 
carriage panels the following pithy distich: 

"Wha wad a thocht it 
That noses could ha 1 bought it?" 

The consumption of the dust north of the Tweed is 
enormous. Every man who would have a smooth path- 
way in "Auld Scotia" carries a "mull' 1 ; it is a letter of 
introduction, a begetter of conversation, a maker of 
friends. Hence it has been said that the way to a 
Scotchman's heart is " through his nose." 

Snuff-taking necessitates snuff-boxes, and it is interest- 
ing to note the ingenuity which has been expended in 
different countries in contriving and ornamenting these 
receptacles of " the dust." In France, in the age of 
Louis XIV, a snuff-box of some elegant material, whether 
decorated with paintings or resplendent with precious 
stones, was part of the necessities of a beauty of ton. 
Mr. Fairholt, in his late work on " Tobacco," states that 
quaint forms have been as common to snuff-boxes as to 
tobacco-pipes. Coffins were at one time hideously adapted 
to hold the fragrant dust. A coiled snake, whose central 
folds form the lid, was a box for a naturalist: a book 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 371 

might serve for a student, and a boat for a sailor. Of a 

fashion in Queen Anne's time a poet thus sings: 

"Within the lid the painter plays his part, 
And with his pencil proves his matchless art; 
There, drawn to life,, some spark or mistress dwells, 
Like hermits chaste and constant to their cells." 

When on the death of Louis XV, the beautiful Marie 
Antoinette ascended the throne of France, the people 
were so fascinated by her charms and virtues, that a 
jeweler made a large fortune by selling mourning snuff- 
boxes in her honor. They were composed of chagrin, with 
the motto La Consolation dans le Chagrin. 

It has been said that snuff-boxes enough have been 
made of Shakspeare's mulberry tree to build a man-of-war. 
Perhaps the most unique and useful of all these devices 
was a snuff-pistol with two barrels, invented about forty 
years ago by an Englishman. By touching a spring with 
the forefinger, both nostrils were instantly filled, and snuff 
enough was driven up the nose to last the whole day. 
Apropos to royal presents of snuff-boxes, to which we have 
alluded, a curious secret came to light some years ago in 
England, showing the manner in which kings are fleeced 
by those with whom they deal, and the heartlessness of 
those on whom they lavish their favors. It appears that 
the royal goldsmith who charged his majesty £1,000 or 
£500 for a presentation snuff-box, was in the habit of 
purchasing it the next day of the donee for about half or 
two thirds of the nominal value, and that the same box 
was again supplied and again repurchased, till some for- 
eigner, not liking the practice or the price, put it in 
his pocket! 

The literature of snuff-taking teems with amusing an- 
ecdotes, with a few of which we will conclude. Every- 



372 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 

body has heard of the thief, who, being arrested for 
having " conveyed " without leave a canister of the dust 
from a shop, protested that he never knew before that it 
was criminal to take snuff; and of the anti-snuffing per- 
son, who, when politely tendered a pinch, refused with 
the rude declaration, that, had Nature intended his nose 
for a snuff-box, she would have turned it the other way, 
— a logical non sequitur, by the way, since by such an 
arrangement the organ could be less easily supplied than 
now. Napoleon's love of snuff has already been hinted 
at; not only on the battlefield, but at home in the coun- 
cil, he had recourse to the dust, especially when his 
schemes were unfavorably received, and he wished to hide 
his uneasiness or impatience. Unable to sit still in his 
elbow-chair, he would try in a thousand ways to divert 
attention from himself; and, among other devices, as 
soon as he saw a member's eye fixed on him, would hold 
out his arm, and shake his thumb and forefinger, to sig- 
nify that he wished for a pinch of snuff. A box being 
promptly tendered, Napoleon would help himself to its 
contents, and then turning it round and round in his 
hands, would invariably conclude, in his abstracted mood, 
by putting it into his pocket. Not less than four, and 
even six, snuff-boxes, disappeared in this manner during 
a single sitting ; and it was not till he had left the coun- 
cil-chamber that he became aware of the larceny. So 
confirmed was this habit, that some of the councillors, 
whose snuff-boxes were heir-looms or presents from for- 
eign princes, hit upon the expedient of carrying cheap 
papier-mache or wooden boxes for the Emperor to pocket. 
The snuff-boxes, however, always returned to their own- 
ers, and, in doing so, were often found to have undergone 



A PINCH OF SNUFF. 873 

a very pleasant metamorphosis. By some necromancy, a 
wooden or tortoise-shell box, on coming out from the im- 
perial pocket, was usually transformed into one of gold, 
set around with diamonds, or hearing the Emperor's min- 
iature on the lid. 

The distress experienced by inveterate snuff-takers 
when long deprived of their favorite stimulus, drives 
them sometimes to desperate shifts; and in such an ex- 
tremity almost any " Jack-at-a-pinch " at all resembling- 
it, is eagerly snapped up to supply the place of the real 
article. A severe snow-storm in the Scottish Highlands, 
which raged several weeks, so blockaded all communica- 
tion between neighboring hamlets, that snuff-takers were 
at length reduced to their last pinch. Among the suf- 
ferers was the parson of the parish, whose craving was 
so intense that the sermon was at a stand-still. " What's 
to be done, John?" was his pathetic inquiry of the 
beadle, who had ended a bootless journey through the 
snow-drifts to a neighboring glen in quest of a supply. 
John shook his head gloomily; but soon started up ab- 
ruptly, as if a new idea had struck him. In a few min- 
utes he came back, crying, "Hae!" The minister, too 
eager to be scrutinizing, took a long, deep pinch, and 
then asked, " Whaur did you get it?' 1 "I soupit (swept) 
the pulpit," was John's triumphant reply. The parson's 
wasted snuff had come to be eminently serviceable in this 
hour of " fearfullest extremity." 

The last anecdote might find an appropriate place in 
Dean Ramsay's amusing book, — -our next in some future 
" Reminiscences of New England Character." Some years 
ago, a clergyman in the land of steady habits, who was a 
most inveterate snuff-taker, commenced the Sunday ser- 



374 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 

vice by reading the fourth section of the 119th Psalm. 
Unconsciously, as he announced the passage to be read, 
and while the hearers were looking it out in their Bibles, 
he drew out his snuff-box, and took a lusty pinch of the 
contents, which resulted in a startling explosion of his 
nasal organ, making the style of elocution somewhat as 
follows: "My soul clea-e-e-e-che-che-e-e-che-che-cleaveth unto 
the dust!" The titter that ran through the church showed 
that not only the poor parson but the congregation " felt 
the pinch," and were " up to snuff.' 1 



INDEX. 



Abbott, his Life of Napoleon, 174. 

Abernethy, Dr., on mental sat- 
uration, 140. 

Accidents, the cause of great 
movements, 188, 189. 

Adams, John Q., anecdote of, 234. 

Agassiz, Professor, unmethodical, 
272; his attention to details, 
277. 

Allen, Col. John, 281. 

Alliteration, 246-249; remarkable 
specimen of, 251. 

Ames, Fisher, 107, 108. 

Anagrams, 242-246. 

Anglo-Saxons, Americans are not, 
299-306; glorification of, 299- 
305; proportion of in the U. S., 
299; how distinguished from 
Americans, 302; a heteroge- 
neous race, 303. 

Anne, Queen of England, curious 
portrait of, 253. 

Archimedes, saying of, 222. 

Authors, Dr. R. South on, 74. 



Bacon, Lord, a taker of bribes, 
193; on truth and falsehood, 
217; not the father of the In- 
ductive Philosophy, 218. 

Balliol CoUege, Oxford, 318. 

Baptists, starved for heresy, 309. 

Beattie, Dr., his sensitiveness to 
harsh noises, 35. 

Beau Brummell, his snuff-boxes, 
351. 

Becket, Thomas a, his reply to a 
monk, 168. 

Beecher, H. W., on Robert South, 
79, 80. 

Bentham, Jeremy, 137. 



Berkeley, Bishop, his style, 51; 
his opinion about matter, 218. 

Bibliomania, 336-346; examples 
of, 345, 346. 

Biography, its misrepresentations, 
192-194. 

Blot, Professor, his lectures on 
cookery, 159. 

"Bluecoat Bovs, 1 ' their origin, 
327, 328. 

Bodleian Library, Oxford, 324, 
325. 

Books and Reading, Professor- 
ships of, 136-158. 

Books, as a means of culture, 136- 
139; original thinkers indebted 
to, 137 ; they stimulate and in- 
flame the mind, 138; may be 
abused, 139; necessary to men- 
tal vigor, 141 ; often chosen and 
read ignorantly, 141-143 ; their 
multiplicity, 143-145 ; new ones 
published annually in England 
and Germany, 144; the num- 
ber one can read in a lifetime, 
144; difficulty of selecting them 
wisely, 146; number which a 
college student can read in his 
course, 148 ; should be re-read, 
150; should be adapted to in- 
dividual tastes, 151, 152; should 
be chosen for the young, 153; 
cannot teach the use of books, 
154; how read most rapidly, 
156-159; great prices paid for, 
343, 344. 

Book- Auctions, 336-339. 

Book-Buying, 336-346. 

Boyer, Dr., Master of Christ's 
Hospital, 331-334. 

Bright, John, secret of his power, 
284. 

Brutus, illusions concerning, 191. 



376 



INDEX. 



"Buncombe 11 speeches not tol- 
erated in the British Parlia- 
ment, 282, 283. 

Burke, Edmund, his voice, 92; 
his pronunciation of ' ' vectigal, ' ' 
124; a rapid reader, 156. 

Burton, John Hill, on biblio- 
mania, 837; his account of a 
bibliotaphe, 342, 343. 

Butler, Bishop, a great reader, 
140. 

Butler, Samuel, verses erroneous- 
ly ascribed to him, 220. 

Byron, Lord, quotation from his 
" Manfred," 31; on underdone 
food, 163; his affectation, 194; 
his influence waning, 287. 



Caesar, Julius, not a strong man, 
130; his epicureanism, 166. 

Calvin, John, his scurrility, 64. 

Cambaceres, 167. 

Camden, on anagrams, 242. 

Cassius, Dion, his histories, 191. 

Carlyle, on the taste for letters, 
155; a rapid reader, 157. 

Chamfort, Sebastian Roch Nich- 
olas, 288-298: his early history, 
289; wins prizes, 289; receives 
a pension, 290: his acrid say- 
ings, 290, 295, 296; his ex- 
cesses, 291 ; his witticisms and 
aphorisms, 291-295: his influ- 
ence with Mirabeau, 291, 292; 
defends the French Revolution, 
292; denounced, 292; attempts 
suicide, 292; his death, 293; 
his physiognomy, 293; his lit- 
erary remains, 293; his disposi- 
tion, 296: his dislike of mar- 
riage, 297; his forte, 297; esti- 
mate of, 298. 

Channing, Dr. W. E., 132. 

Charles I, curious portrait of, 
253. 

Charles V, Emperor, fictitious 
stories concerning him, 211. 

Chatham, Lord, his voice, 91; his 
reply to Walpole, 216. 

Christ Church College, Oxford, 
311-315. 



Christina, of Sweden, saying of, 
207. 

Christ's Hospital, an Hour at, 
327-335; its "Bluecoat Boys," 
327-329; when founded, 328; 
its eminent pupils, 331, 332; its 
master, Boyer, 331-334. 

Cicero, misquoted, 206. 

Clarence, the Duke of, not 
drowned in Malmsey, 200. 

Clay, Henry, his voice, 92; a 
snuff- taker, 353. 

Cobbett, William, on writers, 74; 
inspired by Swift's "Tale of a 
Tub," 137. 

Coincidences of thought and ex- 
pression, 207-210, 214. 

Coleridge, S. T., his discursive- 
ness, 53 ; aided by De Quincey, 
54; his father's absent-minded- 
ness, 38,39; a rapid reader, 156; 
his idleness and irregularity, 
276, 277: at Christ's Hospital, 
332-334. 

Columbus, Christopher, 191. 

Constitution, the physical, its 
power of self-repair, 135. 

Controversy, ancient and modern 
compared, 63-65. 

Cookery, importance of, 159, 161, 
163. 

Cornaro, Lewis, 134. 

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 
316. 

Cranmer, Archbishop, burned at 
Oxford, 311. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 181. 



D'Artois, Count, saying invented 
for, 214-216. 

Davy, Rev. Wm., his " System of 
Divinity," 238, 239. 

Debating-clubs, 284-286. 

Defoe, Daniel, on "True-Born 
Englishmen," 302-304. 

DeMaistre, Joseph, on Bacon's 
philosophy, 218, 219. 

De Maistre, Xavier, on method- 
ical people, 277, 278. 

DeMedicis, Catherine, her treat- 
ment of her enemies, 368. 



377 



Demosthenes on oratory, 206. 

DeQuincey, Thomas, 9-57; his 
personal appearance, 9, 33, 34; 
his versatility, 10, 13; his re- 
markable dreams, 12 ; his literary 
vagrancy, 14, 53, 54; noticed in 
the " Noctes " of Blackwood, 
14; his parentage and birth- 
place, 15; his weakness in 
childhood, 16, 17; his feelings 
on the death of his sister, 16, 
17; his elder brother's tyranny, 
17-20; his proficiency in Greek 
and Latin, 20, 21; his escape 
from school and wanderings in 
Wales, 20; his trials in London, 
21-24; his love of English liter- 
ature, 22; his acquaintance with 
"poor Anne," 23, 24; his life 
at Oxford University, 24, 25; 
his gift to Coleridge, 25; his life 
at Grasmere, 25; on Words- 
worth's good luck, 25, 26; be- 
gins taking opium, 26; his ac- 
count of its effects, 27-30; his 
picture of his home at Grasmere, 
27; his opium-dreams, 29, 30; 
his " Confessions of an Opium- 
Eater, " 29, 32 ^abjures opium, 
31, 32 ; begins his literary labors, 
32; moves to Edinburgh, 32; 
returns to Grasmere, 32 ; invites 
Charles Knight to visit him, 32, 
33; dies at Lasswade, 33; his 
physical sufferings at close of 
his life, 33; his shyness and 
eccentricity, 34, 35; his love of 
music, 34, 49; his sensitiveness 
to harsh noises, 34, 35; his 
courtesy, 35-37; his ignorance 
of money matters, 36; his dose 
of laudanum, 37, 38; his eccen- 
tric social habits, 37, 38; his 
costume at a dinner party, 38; 
his dislike -of shirts, 38; his 
treatment of books, 39, 40; his 
indifference to the fate of his 
writings, 40; his learning, 40, 
41; his memory, 41; a close 
observer of character, 42; his 
power of detecting resem- 
blances, 42; his critical acute- 
38* 



ness, 42 ; his distinction between 
the literature of knowledge and 
that of power, 43; his criticism 
on Pope, 43; his criticisms on 
Brougham, Junius, Sheridan, 
and Parr, 44; contrasted with 
Coleridge, 44; his humor, 45-48; 
his contrast of the stage-coach 
with the railway, 45, 46; his 
"Murder considered as one of 
the Fine Arts, 1 ' 46, 47; his 
pathos, 48, 49;- his recital of a 
victory in Spain, 48, 49; his 
genius for the sublime, 49 ; his 
dialectic skill, 49; his "Logic 
of Political Economy/' 49; his 
style, 50, 51; his remark on 
Berkeley's style, 51; his irreso- 
lution ; his writings fragmentary 
and indeterminate, 52, 53; his 
apology for his vagrancy, 53; 
his conversation, 53, 56; his 
writings commended to young 
men, 56, 57; deplores the pre- 
ference of foreign literatures to 
the English^ 268; explains the 
reason of this preference, 269; 
censures the clerical misrepre- 
sentations of English history, 
176; his opinion of Hume as a 
historian, 178; his estimate of 
the number of volumes that can 
be read in a lifetime, 144. 

Dexter, Timothy, anecdote of, 107, 
108. 

Dibdin, T. F., D.D., his account 
of the " Roxburgh Fight, " 343, 
344. 

Dinner, its connection with liber- 
ality, 160, 161; with kind feel- 
ing, 161; its intellectual aspects. 
163; an index of national life, 
169. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, on the values 
of history and poetry, 185. 

Dreams, DeQuincey's, 29-31, 

Dryden, John, when most in- 
spired, 31. 

Dumas, Alexandre, his ironical 
compliment to Lamartine, 204. 

Dying words of great men, 216, 
'217. 



378 



Early Rising, homilies upon, 229- 
236; arguments for, 229, 230; 
objections to, 230-236; origin 
of the practice, 236 ; Robert 
Hall on, 274. 

Education, Dr. R. South on, 75; 
the proper object of, 120-127; 
why needed in practical pur- 
suits, 126; not all acquired in 
school, 149. 

Elam, Dr. Charles, on the healths 
of senior wranglers and boat- 
men, 131; on the age of cele- 
brated thinkers, 134. 

England, histories of,176 ; Hume's, 
176-179; when named, 200. g 

English literature, its superiority 
to the Greek, 22. 

Englishmen as orators. 283, 284. 

Epitaph, curious, 254. 

Error, its tenacity of life, 217. 

Esquiros, M., on English diet. 164. 

Everett, Edward, his toast to 
Judge Story, 114. 



Fame, literary, 287, 288. 

Faraday, Professor, 137. 

Farragut, Admiral, at Mobile, 
196. 

Fenelon, his love of reading, 138. 

Fluency, easy to acquire, 280: not 
characteristic of full men, 280, 
286 ; a disadvantage in the 
House of Commons, 282, 283. 

Fontenelle, mythical story of, 221. 

Fontenoy, the battle of, 196. 

Foote, the comedian, witticism of, 
208. 

Francis I, of France, his letter 
from Pavia, 205. 

Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, his in- 
debtedness to Cotton Mather, 
137; not fluent, 281; on a veg- 
etable diet, 168. 

Frederic the Great, his knowl- 
edge of French, 265; an early 
riser, 229, 233. 

Frenchmen, their love of epi- 
grams, 213. 



Froucle, J. A., on writing history, 
186; on the disagreements of 
English historians, 186; his his- 
tory of England, 187. 



Galen, his feebleness, 134. 

Galileo, his " epur si muove" 210. 
211; not a martyr, 211. 

Gallatin. Albert, Judge Story's 
opinion of him, 108. 

Germans, the, their dislike of long 
speeches, 282. 

Gibbon, Edward, his love of read- 
ing, 137; his history, 179, 180: 
anecdote of, 221; an early riser. 
230; his snuff- taking, 353. 

Goethe, his mode of studying 
languages, 267. 

Good living, its pleasures relished 
by famous men, 166; required 
by the scholar, 167. 

Goodness, dependent on the stom- 
ach, 159-163. 

Graham. Dr. Sylvester, his bran- 
bread system, 117, 167; effects 
of his regimen, 117; his loss of 
popularity, 118. 

Graham, John, of Claverhouse, 173. 

Great men, often feeble in body, 
134; their "memorable say- 
ings '" generally fabrications, 
201-223 r coincidences in their 
sayings, 207-210. 

Greenleaf, Prof. Simon, as a legal 
teacher, 99. 

Gregory, Nazianzen, his anathe- 
mas of Julian, 63. 

Guizot, on moral chronology in 
history, 180, 181. 

Guy, Thomas, 192. 

H 

Hackett, Dr. H. B.-, an earnest 
reader, 158. 

Hall, Robert, on the conversation 
of Mackintosh, 102; on Dr. 
Kippis's reading, 139; on early 
rising, 274; on the beauty of 
Oxford, 308; his love of the 
pipe, 364. 



379 



Hamerton, P. G., on learning a 
modern language, 265-267. 

Hamilton, Sir W., on desultory 
reading, 150. 

Handel, his voracity, 166. 

Hazlitt, William, saying of, 160. 

Heber, Richard, his libraries, 345. 

Henry IV of France, imaginary 
mot of, 205, 206. 

Henry VIII, 166. 

Henry of Guise, King of Naples, 
189. 

Henry, Patrick, his mode of read- 
ing books, 156. 

Hill, Rowland, his denunciation 
of Charles Wesley, 65; his ear- 
nestness, 95. 

Hippocrates, on mental differ- 
ences, 159. 

Historians, their difficulties, 173- 
178; Montaigne on, 180; forget 
moral chronology, 180; their 
love of antithesis, 183; their 
treatment of the old chroniclers, 
185. 

Historical criticism, 171. 

History, Rev. F. W. Robertson on, 
174; F. W. Froude on, 174, 175; 
its facts ductile, ib.; origin of 
its lies, 183-188; less truthful 
than fiction, 185; dangers of 
conjecture in, 186; its truth 
sacrificed to effect; 187; its 
great events caused by accidents 
or petty means, 188; its reha- 
bilitations of villains, 189, 190: 
its disenchantments, 190-194, 
223-228; defined by Voltaire, 
195 ; some of its doubtful stories. 
197, 198; its substance not 
forged, 224. 

Hobbes of Malmesbury, saying 
of, 140. 

Hobbies, 341. 

Homilies on Early Rising, 229- 
236. 

Huet, Bishop of Avranches, say- 
ing of, 145. 

Hume, David, his history, 176- 
179; his death, 216, 217. 

Hunt, Leigh, on the modes of 
snuff-taking, 356. 



Iconoclasm, 224. 

Idiosyncrasies of celebrated men, 

366. 
Illusions of History, 171-228; their 

supposed utility, 223, 224; their 

loss not to be regretted, 224-227. 
Imperial Guard, the French, at 

Waterloo. 204. 
Indigestion, its moral effects, 160, 

162; its political effects, 16; the 

cause of military defeats, 164. 
Inquisition, the, 173. 
Irishmen, their contributions to 

American prosperity, 300, 301. 



Jackson, Gen. Andrew, and the 

cotton-bags story, 202. 
Jefferson, President, not fluent, 

281. 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, his capacity 

for work, 131, 132; on reading, 

148; a rapid reader, 156; on 

sickness, 160; a snuff-taker, 352. 
Journalism, its effects on writers. 

298. 
Jovius, Paulus, on history, 175. 
Judgment, the most valuable 

mental faculty, 124, 125. 
' ' Juggernaut, ' ' errors concerning. 

201. 

K 

Kane, Dr. Elisha, 133. 

Karr, Alphonse, on tobacco, 348. 

Kean, Edmund, his adaptation of 

food to his theatrical parts, 163. 
Knowledge, its branches related. 

151. 

L 

Labor, the limit of mental, 131 : 
misdirected, 237-240. 

Lamb, Charles, on tobacco, 347; 
his love of snuff, 354; at Christ's 
Hospital, 333. 

Languages, foreign, study of, 263 
-271; Goethe's study of, 266, 
267; why their study is fashion- 
able, 268, 269. 

Leigh, Dr. Theophilus, 318. 



380 



Lewis, Dio,on health and strength, 
129. 

Library, the National, at Paris, 
143; of the British Museum, 
143, 144. 

Lipogrammatists, 240. 

Literary triflers, 237-255. 

Literature, that of knowledge dis- 
tinguished from the literature 
of power, 43; its dependence 
on cookery, 163, 164. 

Locke, John, misrepresented, 218. 

Longevity, a test of strength, 134. 

Lope de Vega, his lipograms, 240. 

Louis XIV, his sayings, 207, 213. 

Louis XVI, his parting from his 
family, 198. 

Luther, Martin, as a controver- 
sialist, 63. 

Luttrell, Henry, witticism of, 209. 

Luxemburg, his endurance, 134. 

M 

Macaulay, T. B., his history, 174, 
181-183; on Gibbon's history, 
179 ; his injustice to Marl- 
borough, 181, 183; his "New 
Zealander, ' ' 209 ; on writing for 
periodicals, 260 ; studies the 
German language, 265; anec- 
dote by, 137. 

Macclesfield, Lord, his advocacy 
of a reform of the calendar, 171 . 

Maclaurin, on the relations of 
knowledges, 151. 

Madison, Mrs. James, her snuff- 
box, 355. 

Magdalen College, Oxford, 321- 
323. 

Maiden, Prof., on education, 120- 
123. 

Man, not designed to be a mere 
mechanic, merchant, etc., 125, 
126; before the Fall, 65, 66. . 

Marlborough, Duke of, 181, 183. 

Marshall, Chief Justice, anecdote 
of, 108; his logical power, 109; 
Daniel Webster on, 110. 

Mason, Dr. John, saying of, 161. 

Merton College, Oxford, 316-318. 

Method, martyrs to, 273, 274; de- 
generates into priggishness,277. 



Michelet, the French historian, 
inspired by Virgil, 137. 

Milton, John, his learning, 140; 
his violence in controversy, 64, 
65 ; on linguistic knowledge, 
267; on scrupulists, 278; and 
his daughters, 200; on earth- 
quakes, 363. 

Mint, U. S., savings in, 147. 

Mirabeau, his indebtedness to 
Chamfort, 292 ; his reply to the 
minister of Louis XVI, 214. 

Misquotations, 219, 220. 

Mitford, Wra,, his history of 
Greece, 174. 

Moigno, the Abbe, effects of to- 
bacco on his memory, 364. 

Montagu, Lady Mary W\, saying 
of, 225. 

Montaigne, on historians, 180; on 
working by rule, 278. 

Montpensier, saying of, 208. 

Moore, Thomas, his songs, 287: 
anecdote of, 353. 

Moral Grahamism, 117-128. 

Morality of Good Living, 159-170. 

More, Hannah, saying of, 162. 

Moscow, not destroyed by the 
Russians, 199. 

N 

Napoleon I, his anagram, 246; 
his power of labor and delicate 
digestion, 130; his Memoirs, 
173; a rapid reader, 156; his 
ascent of the Alps, 198; paral- 
yzed by indigestion, 165; a 
saying of, 281: a snuff- taker, 
353, 372; his habit of borrow- 
ing snuff-boxes, 372, 373; his 
death caused by snuff-taking, 
365. 

Nelson, Lord, imaginary sayings 
of, 202, 203; on the Battle of 
the Nile, 207. 

New College, Oxford, 319-321. 

Newman, Prof. J. H., on mental 
culture, 123. 

Newspapers, advice to their con- 
tributors, 257-262; what are 
most popular, 258; "maps of 
busy life," 259. 



381 



New Testament, interpolations of, 
226, 227. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 139; saying- of, 
145; mythical stories of, 199. 

Normans, the defenders of lib- 
erty, 304, 305. 



Opium, De Quincey's experiences 
with it, 26-32; its exaltation of 
the ideas, 27; the torments it 
inflicts, 27-30. 

Order of the Garter, its supposed 
origin, 198. 

Oriel College, Oxford, 317. 

Oxford, a Day at, 307-326; 
beauty of, 307, 308, 315. 



Palmerston, Lord, his power of 
work, 132; contrasted with Mr. 
Horsman, 283. 

Parr, Dr. Samuel, 166. 

Parsons, Chief- Justice, a rapid 
reader, 157. 

Pascal, Blaise, 138. 

Pembroke College, Oxford, 316. 

Penmanship, microscopic, 252. 

Philip of Valois, imaginary say- 
ings of, 204, 205. 

Piety, dependent on the physical 
health, 161, 162. 

Pinckney, Gen. Charles C, his 
reply to Bonaparte, 212. 

Pope, Alexander, curious portrait 
of, 253 ; his capacity for labor, 
131; an epicure, 166. 

"Practical" education, the pop- 
ular idea of it, 119, 120; objec- 
tions to, 120-126; true defined, 
126-128; not incompatible with 
high culture, 125; its advan- 
tages, 127, 128. 

Professorships of Books and Read- 
ing, 136-158; R. W. Emerson 
upon, 146; objection to, 154; 
qualifications for, 154, 155; du- 
ties of, 154, 157. 

Prynne, William, 238. 

Q 

Quincy, Josiah, anecdote of, 234. 



R 

Races, the most powerful, 306. 

Raleigh, Sir W., 172. 

Readers, 339, 340; wholesale, 340. 

Reading, the abuse of, 139, 140; 
cannot injure an active mind, 
140; mistakes about, 141, 142, 
158; profitless, 142, 143; should 
be systematic and thorough, 

149, 150; effects of desultory, 
150; should be multifarious, 

150, 151'; and have reference to 
individual tastes, 151-153; yet, 
needs an adviser, 153 ; manuals 
and "courses " of, 154; how to 
economize it, 156-159; method 
of Patrick Henry, Dr. Johnson, 
Burke, Napoleon, Coleridge, 
Judge Parsons, Thierry, and 
Carlyle, 156, 157; intensity of 
Dr. Hackett in, 158. 

Read, T. Buchanan, his verses on 
Admiral Farragut, 197. 

Renan, on deceptions, 227, 228. 

Rhymes, double, 252. 

Richardson, Samuel, his novels, 
288. 

Richter, Jean Paul, on reading 
and speaking, 286. 

Riddles, 253-255. 

Robespierre, 184. 

Rome, its early history, 190. 

Rousseau, J. J., on "the profes- 
sion of humanity, 1 ' 126; his 
anagram, 245. 

Roxburgh, the Duke of, sale of 
his library, 343-344. 



Sainte Pierre, story of, 198. 

Saint George, an impostor, 192. 

Scholarship, not incompatible with 
practical ability, 125 ; favorable 
to success in all callings, 125; 
encyclopaedic, 145. 

Scott, Sir Walter, anecdote of, 
209; on methodical people, 273. 

Shakspeare, on feeding and fast- 
ing, 161. 

Sheridan, Richard B., 193, 210. 

Skepticism, its compensations, 
224, 225. 



382 



INDEX. 



Smith, Sydney, on indigestible 
food, 160; description of a 
French savant, 354. 

Smokers, their excesses, 363. 

Sneezing, its pleasures, 357, 358; 
scientifically explained, 358; pic- 
turesque description of, 359; 
why it calls forth the exclama- 
tion of "God bless you," 361; 
a good or bad omen with the 
ancients, 361, 362; superstitions 
about it, 361, 362; a terrific 
instance of, 363. 

Snuff, a pinch of, 347-374; its 
consumers a serious class, 350; 
its influence on Presidential 
elections, 355; modes of taking- 
it, 356; its adulterations, 366, 
367; duty on, in Great Britain, 
370. 

Snuff-boxes, their varieties, 369- 
372; royal, 371, 372. 

Snuff-taking, the best mode of 
using tobacco, 349-350, 363; 
celebrated persons addicted to, 
350-354; promotes social enjoy- 
ment, 354; the modes of, 356; 
legal prohibitions of, 360, 361; 
time wasted in, 361; Bos well 
on its pleasures, 361: preferable 
to smoking, 363, 364; effects of 
excess in, 364-366; not neces- 
sarily injurious, 376; chief ob- 
jections to, 366; effects on the 
complexion, 367: in the days of 
Queen Anne and of Louis XV, 
367; fatal to romance, 368; by 
whom invented, 368; in France 
and England, 368-370; in Scot- 
land, 370; anecdotes of, 372- 
374. 

Solitude, De Quincey on, 17. 

Southey, Robert, on Words- 
worth's treatment of books, 40; 
an excessive reader, 139; his 
methodical habits, 275; value 
of his works, 275, 276; little 
read, 287. 

South, Robert, D.D., 58-80; com- 
pared with Sydney Smith, 58; 
his birth and education, 58, 59 ; 
his studies at Oxford, 59; elect- 



ed public orator to the Univer- 
sity, 59; his sermon on "The 
Scribe Instructed," 59-61; on 
qualifications of the preacher, 
59, 60; on the rhetoric of the 
Scriptures, 61; becomes a parti- 
san of the Restoration, 62; his 
sermon on "Pretense of Con- 
science no Excuse for Rebell- 
ion," 62, 63; on the execution 
of Charles I, 62; his denuncia- 
tion of Vane and Milton, 62; 
his sermon on ' ' Man Created 
in God's Image," 65, 66; his 
sermon on "The Pleasantness 
of Wisdom's Ways," 66, 67; 
on the Roman austerities, 67; 
made Prebendary of St. Peter's, 
Westminster, 67; made canon 
of Christ Church, Oxford, 67; 
his discourse on " Christ]s 
Promise the Support of his 
Despised Ministers," 67; his 
ridicule of Jeremy Taylor, 67, 
68; his sermon on "All Contin- 
gencies Directed by God's Prov- 
idence," 69; his hit at Crom- 
well, 69; refuses a bishopric, 69 ; 
his attitude toward William 
III, 69; his bodily infirmities, 
69; his death, 70; compared with 
Hooker, Barrow and Taylor, 
70; his principal characteristics, 
70; his plainness of speech, 70, 
71; his command of vehement 
language, 71, 72; his intensity 
of thought and feeling, 72; his 
aphorisms and epigrams, 72, 73; 
his sermon on " Extempore 
Prayer," 72-74; his style, 74- 
76; quotations from, 74-76, 79; 
his knowledge of hum an nature, 
76; his coarsenesses of lan- 
guage, 76, 77; his wit, 77-79; 
his ridicule of the Puritans, 77, 
78. m 

Speaking, public, excessive in 
America, 279, 280. 

Spurgeon, Rev. Charles PL, 81- 
96; his "Tabernacle" de- 
scribed, 81, 82; his physiog- 
nomy, 82, 90; his voice, 83, 91, 



383 



92; his Sunday service, 83; one 
of his sermons analyzed, with 
extracts, 84-86; his poor health, 
86; account of an interview 
with him, 87; his preparation 
of sermons, 87; disclaims elo- 
quence, 87,88; his wit, 88; the 
secret of his power, 89-96; his 
audiences, 89; wide circulation 
of his sermons, 89; his popu- 
larity as a preacher, 89; his 
culture, 90, 91; not a theolo- 
gian, 91, 95; his delivery, 92; 
his language, 92, 93; his pic- 
torial style, 93, 94; his earnest- 
ness, 94, 95; not a sensational 
preacher, 95. 

Sterne, Lawrence, 193. 

Story, Joseph, 97-116; his per- 
sonal appearance, and manner, 
97, 98; his wit and humor, 98. 
102, 114, 115: contrasted with 
Professor Simon Greenleaf, 99 ; 
his manner as a lecturer, 100; 
his elasticity and vivacity, 101 ; 
his qualifications as a legal 
teacher, 101; his prodigality 
of learning, 102; his eloquence 
on Constitutional themes, 102, 
103; his descriptions of great 
bar contests, 103, 104; his anec- 
dotes of William Pinkney, 104- 
107; his description of Thomas 
Addis Emmet, 105; his account 
of the arguments in the "Ne- 
reide " case, 105-107; his anec- 
dote of Dexter, Ames, and 
Marshall, 107, 108; his opinion 
of Albert Gallatin, 108; on 
hasty legislation, 108 ; on young- 
statesmen, 109; compares the 
elder and the younger Pitt, 109; 
exposes Lord Chatham's incon- 
sistency, 109 ; his panegyrics on 
Chief Justice Marshall, 109, 110; 
on changes in the U. S. Consti- 
tution, 110; on the difficulty 
of framing unambiguous laws, 
110; on the proper title of John 
Tyler, 111; on Daniel Web- 
ster's magnanimity, 111; his 
frankness in avowing his judi- 



cial errors, 111; his industry, 
111, 112; his literary and polit- 
ical publications, 112; his econ- 
omy of time, 112; his fame as 
a jurist, 112, 113; his love ot 
praise, 113; his experience in 
borrowing money, 113, 114; his 
love for his pupils, 114; his tact, 
115; on Shelley's case, 115; his 
panegyric on Courts of Equity, 
115; his favorite maxims, 115; 
his early poems and orations, 
116; his address at Mt, Auburn 
Cemetery, 116; his statue, 116; 
witticisms of, 234, 235. 

Strength and Health, 129-135. 

Strength, tests of physical, 133- 
135. 

"Strong,' 1 meanings of the word, 
130-135. 

Study of the Modern Languages, 
263-271; its advantages, 263, 
its difficulties underrated, 265: 
Mr. Hammerton on, 265, 266, 
267; when advisable, 268, 270; 
why preferred to the study of 
English writers, 269; injures a 
writer's style, 269, 270; Schil- 
ler's and Moore's opinion of, 
269; not necessary to a knowl- 
edge of foreign literatures, 270. 

Suidas, the historian, 191. 

Sully, Duke of, witty saying of, 
207 : on the battle of Aumaule, 
172.' 

Sumner, Charles, his notices of 
Judge Story, 111, 112. 

Swift, Jonathan, D.D., his letter 
to Halifax, 69; on the writing 
of history, 196; anecdote of, 219. 

Sydney, Algernon, 193. 



Taine, H., on style, 261. 

Talleyrand, saying of, 186; cred- 
ited with other men's witti- 
cisms, 212, 213. 

Taylor, Gen. Zachary, his order at 
Buena Vista, 202. 

Taylor, Jeremy, his style ridiculed 
by South, 67, 68. 

Tell, William, a myth, 191, 192. 



384 



Thackeray, W. M., witticism of, 
209. 

Thelwall, John, his supposed re- 
ply to Erskine, 212. 

Thierry, a rapid reader, 157. 

Thirl wall, his History of Greece, 
174. 

Thomson, James, a late riser, 
233. 

Tillier, M., saying of, 149. 

Time, economy of, 147, 149; how 
to economize in reading, 156- 
158. 

Times, London, on a working 
constitution, 132. 

Tobacco, its fascinations, 347- 
349; inconsistency of its ene- 
mies, 356. 

Toplady, Augustus M., his de- 
nunciation of C. Wesley, 65. 

Torstenston, Swedish general, 132. 

Truth, its value, 228. 

V 

Vatel, the cook of Concle, 169. 

Vengeur, story of the, 196. 

Vespucchi, Amerigo, 192. 

Villains, historical rehabilitations 
of, 189, 190. 

Voltaire, on the Massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, 162; an inventor 
of historical " facts, "' 205; his 
reply to Haller, 208; his name 
an anagram, 246. 

W 
Walpole, Sir Robert, supposed 

saying of, 219. 
Washington, his brevity, 280. 
Webster, Daniel, on Chief- Justice 

Marshall's logic, 110. 



Wellington, Duke of, 124; ficti- 
tious stories concerning him, 
197, 204; on a great victory, 
208; on early rising, 229; on 
speairing French, 267. 

Welsh blood, in eminent Amer- 
icans, 301, 802. 

Wesley, Charles, denounced by 
Rowland Hill and Toplady, 
65. 

Wesley, John, on earnestness in 
preaching, 95. 

Wesley, Samuel, on snuff-taking, 
357. 

Whately, Archbishop, on Gib- 
bon's History, 179. 

William III, of England, his 
power of endurance, 133, 134. 

Winship, Dr. Charles, 134. 

Wirz, the jailor of Andersonville, 
Ould's defense of him, 196. 

Wit, a forgotten, 287-298. 

Wolfe, Gen. James, 132. 

Wollaston, 138. 

Wolsey, Cardinal, 166. 

Woodworth, 194. 

Wordsworth, his good luck, 25, 
26. 

Working by Rule, 272-278. 

Writing, fast, 261. 

Writing for the Press, 256-262; 
an art, 257; its difficulties, 257, 
258. 

X 

Xerxes, fictitious stories of, 197. 



Yankee Doodle, its authorship, 

221, 222. 
Young, Edward, 193, 194. 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GRIGGS &» CO., CHICAGO. 

GETTING ON IN THE WORLD; or, Hints on Suc- 
cess in Life.— By Wm. Mathews, LL.D., Professor of English Literature* 

etc., in the University of Chicago. Beautifully printed and handsomely bound. 

Price, i vol., ,121110., Cloth.... $2 I Half calf binding, gilt top $3 50 

The same, gilt edges 250 [ Full calf, gilt edges 500 

Convents : — Success and Failure — Good and Bad Luck — Choice of a Pro- 
fession — Physical Culture — Concentration— Self - Reliance — Originality in 
Aims and Methods — Attention to Details — Practical Talent — Decision — 
Manner — Business Habits — Self- Advertising — The Will and the Way — 
Reserved Power — Economy of Time — Money, its Use and Abuse — Mercantile 
Failures — Over-Work and Under-Rest — 'True and. False Success. 

14 A book in the highest degree attractive, * * and which will be sure topay 
in dollars and cents many times over the cost of the work, and the time devoted 
to its perusal."— Lockport Journal \ New York. 

" It is sound, morally and mentally. It gives no one-sided view* of life ; it does 
not pander to the lower nature ; but it is high-toned, correctly toned throughout. 
* * There is an earnestness and even eloquence in this volume which makes 
the author appear to speak to us from the living page. It reads like a speech. 
There is an electric fire about every sentence."— Episcopal Register ', Philadelphia. 

" There is no danger of speaking in too high terms of praise of this volume. 
As a work of art it is a gem. As a counselor it speaks the wisdom of the ages. As a 
teacher it illustrates the true philosophy of life by the experience of eminent men of 
every class and calling. It warns by the story of signal failures, and encourages by 
the record of triumphs that seemed impossible. It is a book of facts and not of 
theories. The men who have succeeded in life are laid under tribute, and made to 
divulge the secret of their success. They give vastly more than ' hints ;' they 
make a revelation. They show that success lies not in luck, but in pluck. 
Instruction and inspiration are the chief features of the work which Prof. Mathews 
has done in this volume. 1 ' 1 — Christian Era, Boston. 



THE GREAT CONVERSERS, and Other Essays.- 

By Wm. Mathews, LL.D., author of " Getting On in the World." 

1 volume, i2ino., 306 pages, with Map, price fi 75 

" As fascinating as anything in fiction. 1 ' — Concord Monitor. 

" These pages are crammed with interesting facts about literary men and lite- 
rary work. 11 — New York Evening Mail. 

" They are written in that charming and graceful style, which is so attractive 
in this author's writings, and the reader is continually reminded by their ease and 
grace of the elegant compositions of Goldsmith and Irving. 11 — Boston Transcript. 

" Twenty essays, all treating lively and agreeable themes, and in the easy, 
polished and sparkling style that has made the author famous as an essayist. * * 
The most striking characteristic of Prof. Mathews 1 writing is its wonderful wealth 
of illustration. * * One will make the acquaintance of more authors in the 
course of a single one of his essays than are probably to be met with in the same 
limited space anywhere else in the whole realm of our literature. 11 — The Chicago 
Tribune. 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GRIGGS & CO., CHICAGO. 



WORDS; THEIR USE AND ABUSE, By Prof. Wm. Mathews, 
Author of "Getting on in the World," "The Great Conversers," Etc., $2 00. 

*'A book of rare interest."— Brooklyn Eagle. 
"Every page sparkles with literary gems." — The Interior. 
"An interesting, well-written and instructive volume." —Independent, N. Y. 
"Every literary man and woman should read it.'' — Sunday Times, N. Y. 
"A valuable companion for writers, talkers and people generally." — Boston 
journal. 

"Although written for popular reading, they are scholarly and instructive, and 
in a very high degree entertaining. No one can turn to a single page of the book with- 
out finding something worth reading and worth remembering. It is a book both for 
'ibraries and general reading, as scholars will not disdain its many valuable illustra- 
ions, while the rising writer will find in it a perfect wealth of rules and suggestions 
to help him form a good style of expression." — Publishers' Weekly, New York. 

"To this large class, (the great body of our people in every rank, occupation 
and profession) it will prove a most entertaining recreation and useful study. Young 
men in higher schools, academies and colleges will also find it a useful and helpful 
guide, which will not only save them from committing vulgar solecisms and awkward 
verbal improprieties, but from contracting vicious habits that will stick to them, if 
once suffered to be formed, like the shirt of Nessus." — Christian Intelligencer, New 
York. 

"The final chapter on 'Common Improprieties of Speech' should be printed in 
tract form. . , . We should like to put a copy of this book into the hands of every 
man andivoman who is using or intends to use, our good old Anglo-Saxon with 
voice or pen for any public service. It is a text book, full of information, and con- 
tains hints, rules, criticisms and illustrations, which authenticate their own value.'' — 
Christian at Work, Nezv York 



TWO YEARS IN CALIFORNIA, By Mary Cone. With 15 fine 
engravings, a map of California, and a plan of the Yosemite Valley. Cloth $1.75 

"One of the most reliable and authentic works on California yet issued." — Sun- 
day Times, New York. 

* "One of the best descriptions of the Golden State that has met our eye, . . 
unbiassed, impartial, and intelligent." — Christian at Work, New York. 

"This is a book of absorbing interest. . . No description can do justice to 
it. Every page deserves to be read and studied." — Albany journal. 

"It would be difficult to compress within the same limits more really valuable 
information on the subject treated than is here given." — Morning Star, Boston. 

"Will be of much value to everyone who contemplates either visiting or emi- 
garting to California." — New York Evening Mail. 



PUBLISHED BY S.C. GRIGGS & CO., CHICAGO. 
PRE-HISTORIC RACES OF THE UNITED STATES. 

By J. W. Foster, LL.D., Author of ** The Physical Geography of the Mississippi 
Valley, 1 ' etc. 415 pages, crown 8vo, with a Targe number of illustrations. 

Price, cloth - $3 50 

Half calf binding, gilt top 6 00 

Full calf, gilt edges 7 50 

u One of the best and clearest accounts we have seen of those grand monuments 
of a forgotten race." — London Saturday Review. 

" The reader will find it more fascinating than his last favorite novel. 11 — 
Eclectic Magazine, N. V. 

11 The book is literally crowded with astonishing and valuable facts." — 
Boston Post. 

u It is an elegant volume and a valuable contribution to the subject, * * * 
Contains just the kind of information in clear, compressed and intelligible form, 
which is adapted to the mass of readers." — Appleton's Popular Science Monthly. 

" The book is typographically perfect, and with its admirable illustrations and 
convenient index is really elegant and a sort of luxury to possess and read. * * 
Dr. Foster's style reminds us of Tyndall and Proctor, at their best. * * He 
goes over the ground, inch by inch, and accumulates information of surprising 
jnterest and importance, bearing on this subject, which he gives in his crowded but 
most instructive and entertaining chapters in a thoroughly scientific but equally 
popular way. We have marked whole pages of his book for quotation, and finally 
from sheer necessity have been compelled to put the whole volume in quotation 
marks, as one of the few books that are indispensable to the student, and scarcely 
less important for the intelligent reader to have at hand for reference." — Golden 
Age y New York. fe 



A MANUAL OF GESTURE.- With over 100 Figures, 
embracing a complete system of Notation, with the Principles of Interpretation 
and Selections for Practice. By Prof. A. M. Bacon. 

Price - $1 75 

" Prof. Bacon has given us a work that, in thoroughness and practical value, 
deserves to rank among the most remarkable books of the season. There has in 
fact, been no work on the subject yet offered to the public which approaches it for 
exhaustiver.ess and completeness of detail. * * It is of the utmost value, 
not merely to students, but to lawyers, clergymen, teachers, and public speakers, 
and its importance as an assistant in the formation of a correct and appropriate 
style of action can hardly be over-estimated." — The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

"Prof. Bacon's Manual seems expressly arranged for the help of those who 
study alone and have undertaken self-instruction in the art of persuasive delivery. 
The work in the hands of our ministry, well studied, would have the effect of 
emphasizing the living words of the Gospel all over the land, and making them 
two-edged with meaning. 11 — The Chicago Pulpit. 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GRIGGS & CO., CHICAGO. 
ANDERSON'S NORSE MYTHOLOGY; or The Religion 

Of Our Forefathers. - Containing all the Myths of the Eddas carefully- 
systematized and interpreted, with an Introduction, Vocabulary and Index. — By 
R. B. Anderson, A. M., Professor of Scandinavian Languages, in the University 
of Wisconsin. Crown 8vo, cloth, $2 50 ; full gilt, $3 00 ; half calf, $5 00. 

"Professor Anderson has produced a monograph which may be regarded as 
exhaustive in all its relations." — The New York Tribune. 

"A masterly work. . . No American book of recent years does equal credit 
to American scholarship, or is deserving of a more pronounced success." — Boston 
Globe. 

"I have been struck with the warm glow of enthusiasm pervading it, and with 
the attractiveness of its descriptions and discussions. I sincerely wish it a wide 
circulation and careful study." — William Dwight Whitney, Professor of Sanscrit 
and Comparative Philology, Yale College. 

"I like it decidedly. A mythologist must be not only a scholar but a bit of a 
poet, otherwise he will never understand that petrified poetry out of which the 
mythology of every nation is built up. You seem to me to have that gift of poetic 
divination, and, therefore, whenever I approach the dark runes of the Edda, I shall 
gladly avail myself of your help and guidance." 

Yours truly, F. Max Muller, University of Oxford. 

"We have never seen so complete a view of the religion of the Norsemen. 
The Myths which Prof. Anderson has translated for us are characterized by a wild 
poetry and by suggestions of strong thought. We see images of singular beauty 
in the landscape of ice and snow. Sparks of fire are often struck out from these 
verses of flint and steel."— Bibliotheca Sacra. 

"Professor Anderson is an enthusiastic as well as an able scholar ; and he 
imparts his enthusiasm to his readers. His volume Jf? deeply interesting as well as 
in a high degree instructive. No such account of the old Scandinavian Mythology 
has hitherto been given in the English language. It is full, and elucidates the 
subject in all points of view. It contains abundant illustrations in literal and 
poetic translations from the Eddas and Sagas. . . Professor Anderson's inter- 
pretations of the myths throw new light upon them, and are valuable additions (as is 
the whole work) to the history of religion and of literature. . . It deserves to 
be welcomed, not only as most creditable to American scholarship, but also as an 
indication of the literary enterprise which is surely growing up in our North-western 
States." — The Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review. 



AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS.-A 

Historical Sketch of the Discovery of America by the Norsemen in the 10th cent- 
ury. By Prof. R. B. Anderson, of the University of Wisconsin, with an Appendix 
on the Historical, Literary and Scientific value of the Scandinavian Languages. 

Price, 12mo, cloth '. $1 00 

"A valuable addition to American history. The object is fully described in its 
title page, and the author's narrative is very remarkable. * * * The book is 
full of surprising statements, and will be read with something like wonderment." — 
Notes and Queries, London. 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GRIGGS & CO., CHICAGO. 

VIKING TALES OF THE NORTH. -The Sagas of Thorstein, Vik- 
ing's Son, and Fridthjof the Bold. Translated from the Icelandic by Prof. R. B. 
Anderson, Author of "Norse Mythology," and Jon Bjarnason. Also, Stephens's 
translation of Tegner's '• Fridthjof's Saga." Complete in one volume, 12mo, 
Cloth, $2.00. 

"A charming book it is. Your work is in e very-way cleverly done. * * 
The quaintly, delightful sagas ought to charm many thousands of readers, and your 
translation is of the best."— Willard Fiske, M. A., Ph. D., Prof, of the North 
European Languages, Cornell University. 

"This work, as a whole, will please and instruct all classes of readers, and espe- 
cially those who wish to search out the antiquities of Scandinavian literature. But 
every one will be struck with the majesty and force of that old poetry of the north." 
— The Churchman, New York. 

"The literal translations of Anderson and Bjarnason are full of interest of a rare 
kind. * * Whoever fails to read them, will lose a rare fund of that peculiar wealth 
of thought and feeling which is suggested by the earlier, simpler life of mankind." — 
The Christian Union, New York. 

"Prof. Anderson's book is a very valuable and important one. The 'Saga of 
Thorstein, Viking's Son,' * * teems with magnificently dramatic situations, the 
impressiveness of which are rather increased by the calm directness and dignity with 
which they are related. And these features are as characteristic of the English ver- 
sion as of the Icelandic originals The translator shows an intimate acquaintance 
with all the intricacies of that cruelly inflected language, and an enthusiastic appre- 
ciation of its epigrammatic pith and vigor. * * Tegner's celebrated poem 'Fridth- 
jof's Saga,' is sufficiently novel in its theme and abounding in melody and rhythm 
to yield a large measure of enjoyment." — The Nation, New York. 



FRIDTHJOF'S SAGA.— A Norse Romance. By Esaias Tegnek 
Translated from the Swedish by Thos. A. E. Holcomb and Martha A. Lyon 
Holcomb. One volume, 12mo, Cloth, $1.50. 

"Its beauties are innumerable. The grand old Viking spirit glows in every line." 
— Christian Leader, N. Y. 

'"Fridthjof's Saga' so beautifully embalmed in English verse, must become a 
household treasure among lovers of elegant and curious literature." — St. Louis 
Times. 

"No one can peruse this noble poem without arising therefrom with a loftier idea 
of human bravery and a better conception of human love." — Inter-Ocean, Chicago. 

"Wherever one opens the poem he is sure to light upon passages of exquisite 
beauty. Longfellow styles it the noblest poetic contribution which Sweden has yet 
made to the literary history of the world." — Church journal, New York. 

" 'Fridthjof's Saga' is an interesting story, told with great skill, tenderness and 
^picturesque language, while the characters are discriminated with a talent worthy 
of the most observant student of human nature. * * * Sweden in the person of 
Bishop Tegner, offers the true poet, who, in describing the struggles of souls, has 
produced an immortal poem. * * The Holcomb translation is so well done that 
it would be difficult to better it in any single respect." — Boston Gazette. 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GRIGGS &> CO., CHICAGO. 

THE PILOT AND HIS WIFE.-By Jonas Lie. Translated from 

the Norse by Mrs. Ole Bull. 12mo, Cloth. $1.50. 

"The book abounds in a rare poetic force." — The Nation. 

"Lie is a novelist of very marked genius." — North American Review. 

"It opens to English readers new and vivid fields of romance." — Hartford Post. 

"It fascinates the attention and moves the feelings with a strange power, and 
when the book is finished it is easy to realize that we have been under the spell of a 
master." — Appleton' s Journal. 

"In manner, plot and treatment, it is so totally different from all other writings 
as to excite the liveliest interest. * * Lie is a writer of marked peculiarities and 
rare genius. His dramatic powers are intense, but his presentations of the passions 
and inspirations, the workings of heart, and the struggles of soul, are more vivid and 
striking still. * * The beauty and poetry of the novel is found in the literary 
workmanship which gives us the character of 'Elizabeth.' It is essentially an orig- 
inal character, and a pure and noble conception." — Sacramento Daily Union. 

"It is a remarkably attractive book. * * Some of the characters are exqui- 
sitely drawn, notably those of the pilot and his wife Elizabeth. The latter is a 
delightful creature. The reader cannot but be struck by the intense power with 
which the author manages the pathetic incidents of his story, and with the natural- 
ness that pervades the whole. The artistic workmanship will strike every person of 
thought and culture, while the vivid descriptions in the more exciting portions will 
fully absorb the attention of those who read only for amusement. There is a fresh- 
ness and originality in the book, an out-door flavor and breeziness, that cannot fail 
to win for it a high degree of favor." — Boston Gazette. 



PETERSON'S NORWEGIAN - DANISH GRAMMAR 

AND READER.— With a Vocabulary, designed for American Students of the 
Norwegian-Danish Language. By Rev. C. I. P. Peterson, Professor of Scandina- 
vian Literature. 12mo, Cloth. $1.25. 

"I may say that I have myself read through the Norwegian-Danish Grammar 
of Peterson, and when I affirm that I find myself able to translate the reading exer- 
cises with great readiness, it may be inferred how well the book is adapted to for- 
ward one in a knowledge of this interesting but neglected language."—/*. Winchell, 
LL.D. Professor in Vanderbilt University, late Chancellor of the University of 
Syracuse. 

"I rejoice to see the door opened to American Students to the treasures of Nor- 
wegian letters, and in so attractive a manner as in Mr. Peterson's work. No more 
useful direction for philological study opens to English scholars now than the re- 
search into Anglo Saxon and Norse Northern tongues. This work will be surely a 
valuable help in this direction." — Prof. Frank Sewell, President of ' Urbana Uni- 
versity. 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GRIGGS 6- CO., CHICAGO. 

ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER, For Deliberative Assemblies.— 
By Major H. M. Robert, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A. Pocket size, cloth, 75 cents. 

This book is far superior to any other parliamentary manual in the English 
language. It gives in the simplest form possible all the various rules or points of 
law or order that can arise in the deliberations of any lodge, grange, debating 
club, literary society, convention, or other organized body, and every rule is com- 
plete in itself, and as easily found as a word in a dictionary. Its crowning excel- 
lence is a "Table of Rules relating to Motions," on two opposite pages which 
contains the answers to more than two hundred questions on parliamentary law, 
\vhich will be of the greatest value to every member of an assembly. 

" It should be studied by all who wish to becomfc familiar with the correct 
Usages of public meetings." — E. O. Haven, D. D., Chancellor of Syracuse Uni- 
versity. 

"It seems much better adapted to the use of societies and assemblies than 
eivher Jefferson's Manual or Cushing's."— f. M. Gregory, LL. D., late President 
of the Illinois Industrial University. 

"I shall be very glad to see your Manual brought into general use, as I am 
sure it must be, when its great merit and utility become generally known. — Hon. T. 
M. Cooley, LL. D , author of ' Cooley's Blackstone,' " etc. 

" After carefully examining it and comparing it with several other books having 
the same object in view, I am free to say that it is, by far, the best of all. The 
'Table of Rules ' is worth the cost of the work." — Thomas Bowman, D. Z>., 
Bishop of Baltimore M. E. Conference. 

"This capital little manual will be found exceedingly useful by all who are 
concerned in the organization or management of societies of various kinds. . . . 
If we mistake not, the book wdl displace all its predecessors, as an authority on 
parliamentary usages."— New York World. 

"I admire the plan of your work, and the simplicity and fidelity with which 
you have executed it. It is one of the best compendiums of Parliamentary Law 
that I have seen, and exceedingly valuable, not only for the matter usually 
embraced in such a book, but for its tables and incidental matter, which serve 
greatly to adapt it to common use." — Dr. D. C. Eddy, Speaker of the Massachu- 
setts House of Representatives . 

MISHAPS OF MR. EZEKIEL PELTER.-Hlustrated. 

12mo, cloth $1.50. 

" So ludicrous are the vicissitudes of the much-abused Ezekiel, and so much of 
human nature and every-day life intermingle, that it will be read with a hearty zest 
for its morals, while the humor is irresistible. If you want to laugh at something 
new, a regular side-plitter, get this book."— The Evangelist, St. Louis. 

" We have read Ezekiel. We have laughed and cried over its pages. It grows 
in interest to the last sentence. The story is well told, and the moral so good, that 
we decidedly like and commend it."— Pacific Baptist, San Francisco. 



PUBLISHED BY S. C. GRIGGS & CO., CHICAGO. 
PHILOSOPHY OF THE PLAN OF SALVATION- 

By Rev. J. B. Walker, D.D., with an Introductory Essay by Calvin E. Stowe, 
D.D. A new edition, with supplementary chapter by the author. Sixty-seventh 
thousand, i vol. nmo. Price, $1.50. 

" Though written with great simplicity, it is evidently the production of a 
mastermind. * * and few works are more adapted to bring skeptics of a certain 
class to a stand. * * It is the disclosure of the actual process of mind through 
which the author passes, from the dark regions of do^nbt and infidelity to the clear 
light and conviction of a sound and heartfelt belief of the truth «s it is in Jesus. 

" There is in many parts of this treatise, a force of argument and a power of 
conviction almost resistless. 

" It is a work of extraordinary power. * * We think it is more likely to 
lodge an impression in the human conscience, in favo?- of the divine authority 
of Christianity, than any work of the modern press." — London Evangelical 
Magazine, England. 

" No single volume we ever read has been so satisfactory a demonstration of 
the truth of religion, or has had so strong a controlling influence over our habits 
of thought. * * No better book can be put into the hands of the honest and 
intellectual skeptic. It is overwhelmingly convincing to reason, and leaves the 
doubter nothing but his passions and prejudices to bolster him up. * * Every 
minister's library should have a copy." — The Methodist Protestant, Baltimore. 

11 It fills a place in theological literature which no other book does. It is the 
style of the argument which gives power, impressiveness, and perennial freshness 
to this production. * * We have found in pastoral experience that we could 
place no better uninspired book than this in the hands of intelligent doubters, or 
in the hands of new converts, for their aid and guidance. Those who are not 
familiar with it, will do well to procure a copy and study it carefully. It is worth 
more than some large libraries to those who read for their profiting.'' — The Christ- 
ian at Work, New York. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT; Or Phil- 
osophy of the Divine Operation in the Redemption 

Of Man. — Being volume second of u The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation." 
By Rev. J. B. Walker, D.D. Fourth edition, revised and enlarged. Price, 
$1.50. 

" The author's former able works have prepared the public for the rich treas- 
ures of thought in this volume. It is a book of foundation principles, and deals in 
the verities of the gospel as with scientific facts. It is an unanswerable argument 
in behalf of Christ's life, mission, and doctrine, and especially rich in its teachings 
concerning the office and work of the Spirit. No volume has lately issued from the 
press which brings so many timely truths to the public attention. While it is 
metaphysical and thorough, it is also clever, forceful, winning for its grand truth's 
sake, and every -way readable. The author has wrought a great work for the 
Christian Church, and every minister and teacher should arm himself with 
strong weapons by perusing the arguments of this book. It is printed and bound 
in the exquisite style of all publications which issue from Messrs. S. C. Griggs & Co.'s 
establishment." — Methodist Recorder, Pittsburgh. 



m$m 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



015 8216991 •! 



&M$ 



wimm 



HHiniir 



if 

ft 

■ 

IHIiil 

111 

ItiiilfS 



H| 



W 



■ 

Hi 



HSili 



H 






H 
MM 



In 



MgHap 

119 



